"The challenge to Smith was to grow the Taser stun gun and body-camera maker 10-fold over a 10-year performance period starting in 2018. From a base of $2.5 billion, Smith had to increase the company's market cap by $1 billion to unlock each new tranche of stock options, for a total of 12 tranches and a market cap of $13.5 billion."
""In full candor, my wife was against me taking on the challenge, as she saw it as just too risky," Smith wrote in a letter to investors in 2023. But Smith blew through all the goals and each of the 12 tranches in five years-half the time the board gave him-making Smith the highest-paid CEO last year with compensation valued at $165 million. The stock price grew more than 600% between 2018 when the board offered him the moonshot and 2023."
Rick Smith accepted a high-risk, Musk-style moonshot compensation plan that required growing Axon tenfold over a ten-year period beginning in 2018. The plan started from a $2.5 billion market cap and required $1 billion market-cap increases to unlock each of 12 tranches, reaching $13.5 billion, plus meeting eight revenue or eight adjusted-EBITDA operational goals. Smith received minimal pay during the performance period, with salary around $31,000 and no bonuses. He met all operational and market-cap targets in five years, drove the stock up over 600% from 2018 to 2023, earned roughly $165 million in compensation, and later negotiated an $88 million reduction on his next performance plan.
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