She gets involved with a web of startup SaaS businesses that she believes have opportunity and leverages these connections making her a strategic board member on all.
View attachment 192526
Leanne Graham is often asked why she walked away from Xero after she helped the company win 120,000 customers in three years. Ever the entrepreneur, she has a one-word answer: opportunity.
...
Rather than back one cloud program for several years as she did with Xero, Graham decided to form a venture-capital company called Cloud Rainmakers and share her expertise with several investments.
“I figured I could give my time and money to help some of those businesses execute globally,” Graham says.
https://www.digitalfirst.com/add-on-market-a-massive-opportunity-says-xero-exec/
View attachment 192526
So to answer your question the fact she is involved with so many SaaS start ups is her strategic advantage. It would be great if she had more skin in the Velpic game but if every board and consultancy gig required that she would be broke. The fact she has so many connections is what makes her incredibly valuable for Velpic. It is as if she has amassed a small army of cross-promoting and revenue sharing SaaS startups where compatible.
As you said, good to keep a balanced view so keep up the sceptical eye to see if we are being led up the garden path!
We will see if she has the right strategy in time.
In my opinion, the directors are trustworthy. Three of them already have huge stakes and to be honest I would never expect them to take up the full rights offer.
No matter how great your startup very few would mortgage the family home for it.
Instead, look at their uptake relative to their remuneration rather than their holdings.
View attachment 192535
What I recommend investors look at is Dan Rhor and Leanne Graham's uptake. Dan Rhor has been paid his fees predominately in shares and is sub-underwriting $50k. Therefore, he has worked entirely for shares and is even putting in his own money. Leanne is sub-underwriting $20k and she earns $42k a year from Velpic.
The other three have 37.5M shares. That means they will have to find $450k each to take up the full rights offering. That is more than they have worked for over the past three years. I will be impressed if they can get $100k (3.33M shares) each to be honest.
I guess what I am suggesting is that I see they are definitely contributing what they can. Couple that with my suspicions that Merchant rushed their Top 20 entry to participate in this rights offering (they were instrumental in the success of the RTO and appear close to Piers Lewis [our secretary]
) and you can see that the power brokers in this company are keen to fund a second round this financial year at a 20% premium to 8 months ago
For now though, to the 8 month share price decline: