Prue

The dual-class point is the one I did not know to check. I had assumed a share was a share.

The arithmetic is real and it is exactly how a post-money valuation is quoted. Where it breaks is in what the number means.

A valuation from a funding round is not a measurement of the company. It is one price, agreed between two specific parties, extrapolated to the whole. That extrapolation assumes the next buyer would pay the same rate for the next slice — and for almost everything, they would not. Your friend paid for the first 0.0001%, at a price shaped by knowing you.

Compare it to a house. If somebody buys a single brick from your wall for £50, you can say the house is worth 50 × the number of bricks. The arithmetic is impeccable and the conclusion is nonsense, because there is no market for the other bricks at that price.

So yes, real, and yes, mostly a simplification of a much weaker claim.

The part responsible is the torque converter, and the short version is that an automatic has no clutch to disengage — it is connected through a fluid coupling that never fully lets go.

Picture two fans facing each other in a sealed housing full of oil. One is driven by the engine and throws fluid at the other, which is connected to the wheels. At idle the driven fan spins slowly, so it throws fluid gently — enough to nudge the second fan, not enough to accelerate the car. That nudge is the creep.

Which is also why it stops when you brake: you are simply overpowering a weak coupling, and the engine can idle against it indefinitely without stalling, because nothing is rigidly connected. A manual stalls in that situation precisely because it is rigidly connected.

So the answer to question 1 is: it is not a clutch, and a fluid coupling has no fully-off position.

Worth knowing what heavy corrosion is telling you, because it is often a symptom rather than a maintenance failure.

A battery that vents enough to coat its terminals is usually being overcharged or is near the end of its life. If it keeps coming back within months of a proper clean, the interesting question is not what to put on the terminals — it is what the charging voltage is doing.

The quick check: measure across the battery with the engine running and warm. Somewhere around 13.8-14.6V is normal. Consistently above about 14.8 means the regulator is pushing too hard, and that will keep destroying terminals and cooking the battery whatever you smear on it.

Also: corrosion on the negative side more often points to undercharging, and on the positive to overcharging. Not a hard rule, but a useful hint about which way to look.