On Saturday 18 January 2003 06:20 am, Anne Wilson wrote: > On Friday 17 Jan 2003 11:25 pm, Ben Reser wrote: > > Anne, there is no way the majority of the shareholders are people like > > you and I. We make up a minute portion of the funding. > > Totally accepted. > > > If you refer to > > Mandrakesoft's web page about the company you will note rather large > > venture investors. These are undoubtably the people who installed the > > executives that got us in this mess... As far as I know those people > > are still shareholders. Yes this is an assumption. But Mandrake would > > have to have incurred significant debt to buy out these shareholders. > > You could be right. I don't know the answer to this. I just feel that > business investors and vcs are not necessarily the same thing. Business > investors, of course, can be a problem if their core business hits a > difficult time, and these are difficult times for most. VCs, however, > almost always have a very short-term plan, and I think are the real risk. > I don't know whether they are still around. I got the impression that they > weren't. > > > What we know of the debt suggests it was more of contracts not share > > buybacks. > > Agreed. Again, my impression is that these are contracts imposed by the > VCs. My hope is that the court administration will enable them to buy out > at more favourable terms. > > I'm sure that we both wish Mandrake a good future. :) > > Anne
Anne: It's no accident that VC's are sometimes referred to as "vulture capitalists". They are the modern embodiment of the old time con men and snake oil salesmen; they just wear nicer suits and have MBA's. If the general public had a better understanding of VC's, we'd be hearing VC jokes instead of lawyer jokes. Although some of the breed are still around, others have learned to ask "Would you like fries with that?" -- cmg
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