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Gridz, I think the derampers crucify Draper for simply living, although they would probably criticise him for dying too...something along the lines of bailing out on shareholders (even if they don't actually own any shares themselves). I am sure he could give every last asset he owns to the most deprived/ill children on the planet and he would be criticised for it somehow.
On this occasion he was very much damned if he did and damned if he didn't and as someone else mentioned, maybe he just can't even afford to, or at least at a meaningful level. In the end it is probably safer (and has more integrity) for him not to. As you said, he would have been battered.
Not sure there needs to be a conspiracy regarding whether they have published the AGM numbers or not. Naivety perhaps but really who cares, and really what difference does it make if it was 99% or 51%. I am sure there are greater to things to worry about, both in life and even with regards to BIDS than speculating on what the lack of a voting number might or might not mean.
And to put it in context I most definitely believe in Roswell, Big Foot, Nessie, the power of the Masons, anti vaxxers and every other conspiracy available.
It is the same with the criticism of Draper and the board, they have perhaps been naive in some instances, but I struggle to see what the reason is for anything more untoward given that Draper still holds a huge chunks of shares (and only sold a tiny amount). Seriously it is a rather pathetic crime for the sake of a few hundred £k...Although maybe we should add to the purported list of crimes that he is criminally bad at ramping the share price for his own significant benefit.
And seriously is he the worst CEO in the world? Whilst he might have a way to go before he is CEO of the year, he really doesn't deserve some of the vitriol he gets. James Draper is the CEO of a tiny company that he founded and is making a decent go of. Does anyone really expect him to have have suddenly jumped to be of the calibre of Bezos or others overnight? It is a fairly steep learning curve for him (and he does seem to have some experienced people on the board now).
BIDS is a start-up, as such statistically speaking the chances are it will fail, hopefully it will be one of the exceptions. It at least seems to have a good offering and revenue aside is making some progress.
It is also likely that the big players in the industry (ad and gaming), would require things such as this.
It is only common sense that companies such as this should go for this certification. It gives proof/confidence to stakeholders and hopefully helps them focus on information security. I would suspect the others will get it in due course, as they should.
Perhaps a sign of companies moving in to a more mature approach to operations
Can I ask a question. How is Draper selling c.2% of his holding, selling out?
Chancers looking forward to seeing the comments from the brokers notes also. Mine's a coffee please
Another x! It really is my lucky day.
One might argue that is why it is an idiotic belief and yep wait and see would be prudent. I was meaning more generally, not necessarily this minute. But then that is probably the ideology to take with bidstack throughout, right until they run out of cash (or not)
Dearest TakeAimFire and undoubtedly miss most of the time. Thanks for your kind words, I feel so privileged and I even got an x as well! Aw shucks.
Being an idiot, I still don't know why you couldn't tell everyone. So far all I can tell is that you want to make someone feel small by calling them an idiot. I don't really get it.
Anyway back to my idiotic belief that Bidstack is worth a punt
And the points of your posts are? Mike Turner may or may not be in trouble, but you cryptically don't want to tell anyone because? Is it a fun secret? Is that actually providing any interesting insight to the bulleting board or maybe boredom is setting in?
Mike Turner is the person who thingy me bob believes wrote the expose on him and apparently is going to be hit with a multitude of litigation. All of which might be true, but why not just state all of that?
Chancers, what is it you want him to tell you? And I am sure your point could have been said without using lyin'...
I think as many have said, in general there is nothing new there. The big question is the raise, when and how much and how much of a runway that gives them. None of that is yet clear and is hard to extrapolate from accounts that are already way out of date.
As mentioned below, £10m would be sensible, but even then without any indication of burn rate we have no idea of how long that would last. I suspect this won't be the last raise, but then I am fairly sanguine about that. I still think there are significant upsides in the long term.
I think the mistake all along has been an AIM listing rather than going the route of many start-ups, but maybe that was never really an option
It is actually courtesy of the TW podcast (I actually listened to a few minutes) and it is apparently eight to the person that wrote the expose on him and the other people in it. There is some shall we say polite suggestion that people on bulletin boards shouldn't cast aspersions etc etc. Apparently he is not bothering to serve one himself.
Anyway, I think it is just time to ignore his whole commentary. He can try to sell his subscriptions etc to whomever if they so choose and everyone else can read whatever they want.
I had a quick look at ************* and I think they are best left to shout about whatever they wish. TW can continue to call James Draper a liar as many times as is humanly possible, and hopefully James Draper can answer by Bidstack being a resounding success. From the podcast it really does sound like a mountain out of a molehill as regards whether the Lumen report is independent or not and he has his right to his own opinion, I even believe he might have some knowledge of the industry from the now defunct IQ Holdings.
From a quick search, I can't even tell if their revenues exceeds that of Bidstack or if they even have a balance sheet with cash on it, never mind if it runs out in May. Who knows how many subscribers they actually have. I can't even work out who truly has an economic stake in it. According to their terms and conditions it is owned by Investor Research Laboratory Limited Inc (the only company I could find with that name is in South Dakota, and if it is a small company in the US, then there is very little chance of any further information). He hasn't been a director of any company registered in the UK for a long long time. From various blogs it sounds like he had fun with Rivington Street Holdings last decade, some of the blogs weren't overly polite about his record. Anyway good luck to him and his.
Sorry, I am quite geeky on searching for these things, so I will stop now and take some of my own advice...
Fair enough on your points and of course no one has to comment and if lawyers are involved then one would expect that they wouldn't. However given that my understanding is that TW has made insinuations against Draper, then I would suggest that that if an article suggests that TW has ulterior motives, it is fairly relevant as regards his integrity to comment on BIDS/Draper.
I was interested as to whether TW had, in an article that I can't actually see, refuted the insinuations directed at him. If any are true then it would seem very relevant to a discussion on Bidstack. Also if they were true, it would seem to remove one of the biggest naysayers of BIDS, and accentuate the positives...
I would hope that James Draper doesn't pay too much credence to TW anyway. Ultimately his job is to lead his company to success (or if your glass is half-full, save it from an impeding cash crisis). I think it is an interesting proposition and they have a decent shot at success and I would prefer he puts his energies to succeeding and prove the naysayers wrong. I actually think he is doing a reasonable job and seems to have a good feel for the capabilities of his company. I appreciated that he has probably made some missteps along the way, but who hasn't.
I should have further mentioned that I think that given that he is more than happy to call James Draper a liar, then his own integrity needs to be established beyond reproach.
So did he actually refute the findings from the "expose", i.e. disprove the various links that were highlighted or was mostly an attack on the author and their motives? From recollection the expose made assumptions as to motive based on the links and fine they are assumptions, but did TW actually disprove that the links existed.
I had a look at his Twitter feed today. It did make me laugh that someone would give themselves the monkier of sheriff of anything. I though pinning a badge on and claiming to be a sheriff stopped before you hit puberty, but hey ho each unto their own etc etc.
I think of more concern is that as someone who professes to analyse and use data, some of the retweets suggest a lack of proper questioning and analysis of data. One for example on Covid-19 stating that it wasn't all that bad seem to have some questionable analysis in it. If said person is promoting potentially iffy analysis, what does that say about their own analytical capabilities...
I too don't have access to the articles. I wonder if he anywhere actually went through how the article was inaccurate and refute key aspects of it, or was it more of an attack on BIDS and threats of litigation. I guess in the interests of the transparency that he must be so beholden to, that we will be able to access this at some stage. Maybe it is just some sort of difficulty in switching off a paywall or something...
A further aspect that is interesting about the research is that Bidstack/Draper were confident enough in the outcome to commission it to prove to the auto company that Bidstack might have an edge. This kind of research probably wasn't cheap for a company on a shoestring and if they weren't confident in the outcome, they could probably have just walked away.
As other posters have said, it is basically a none-story. Companies commissioning research to understand their market and customer behaviour is not exactly a revelation. Any agency worth their salt will conduct it with robustness and integrity as it is their brand on the line for research. Given that Lumen is a member of the MRS, it would also go against the MRS code of conduct and therefore damage Lumin's "award winning" brand if it wasn't conducted in the appropriate manner. I am sure that Bidstack is hardly the most valuable client that Lumen has, and therefore there would be little incentive for them to damage their brand with underhand research
I don't know this TW person, and I am fairly sure I never want to, but one could ponder whether he has some rather narcissistic tendencies or feels the need to compensate for something.
If only. Can you spare me a tenner? I have lost all of mine on bashers driving down the BIDs share price
Maybe if I play the right game, I might see a targeted ad offering a pizza delivery. Imagine that...
I'd rather have a pizza