> But this is an unusual deal: the founders have reserved big
> chunks of the shares for themselves - the public would be
> buying a minority interest.
It seems they've cribbed quite a bit from the prospectus of Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway "Class B" shares -- that were designed to ward off mutual funds who mirrored the "Class A" shares through his public statements of holdings. He basically said: I wouldn't buy these shares, and neither should you.
They of course were oversubscribed and today are worth a nice multiple of the IPO price.
/jordan