SRO is not and has never been investment grade. After Noah completed 500 Startups and burned through friends and family money, he needed to backdoor IPO SRO on the ASX to keep funding his experiments on the back of the unsuspecting Aussie retail investor. No legitimate angel group or VC in the U.S. would write a check.
Noah is the Billy McFarland of the ASX and SRO is it’s Fyre Festival. He has tried a series of business models and pivots, first with a Pinterest-based advertising model which failed when Pinterest didn’t want to participate, then UGC - failure, Media Consent - weak market traction, 2 unrelated $500K acquisitions to form the ShareRoot Group, which now has 3 stinkers rolled up into one, while all the while giving cheery interviews and galavanting from conference to conference pretending to be an expert in the privacy space he knows nothing about, and in which his series of business pivots have never gained any traction.
While we’re on the topic of privacy, let’s shed some light on some clever mis-truths. First, SRO’s original office in Berkeley was not in Silicon Valley, quite far from it actually. To save money, after he laid off his team and his co-founder/CTO left, Noah moved to Boise, Idaho where he currently resides. Where is that you ask? Good question. It’s in the middle of nowhere. Why? The cost of living is cheaper than CA, and his juicy AUD$180K salary (thanks retail investors!) goes a lot further.
The company has very few actual employees remaining. There are outsourced contract developers overseas, and a revolving door of advisors with impressive credentials, but no real management or fiduciary responsibility in the business. This is not the structure of a strong company, with good board of directors oversight, a healthy work environment, and worthwhile innovation. This is a failed company. Let’s call a spade a spade.
The party is over. Let’s take SRO out back and shoot it in the head, bury it, and move on. No more CRs. No consolidations and fancy financial maneuvers. If Noah cared at all about his shareholders and doing right by them, he would recognize his business for what it is - a series of failed pivots, and return the remaining AUD$600K at bank to shareholders, shut it down, and
go get a job.
Good riddance.
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