The influence of a founder - a Brainchip Story, page-62

Thank you for your post connellm0— you’ve very neatly summed up the reality many of us have come to reluctantly accept. Yes, this remains very much a Founder-driven company operating more like a private venture than a public enterprise accountable to its shareholders. And yes, the AGM provided perhaps the clearest public window yet into the mindset of the Board — detached, insular, dismissive, and disturbingly comfortable with the minimal transparency they provide.

We all pinned some hope on the appointment of Lancaster Grove as a reset for investor relations. Yet here we sit, several weeks in, and what have we heard? Nothing. Multiple shareholders report polite and constructive outreach attempts being met with complete silence.

Why is this? A few possibilities come to mind.

First, perhaps Brainchip has instructed Lancaster Grove to keep quiet for now — to buy time while they attempt to land some elusive commercial deal which, if signed, might help release the pressure valve building around this stock. That would be a deeply cynical but sadly plausible explanation.

Second, it may simply be that Lancaster Grove is already revealing itself as wholly inadequate for the task — unable or unwilling to engage with retail shareholders beyond transactional boilerplate.

Third — and this is perhaps the most unsettling possibility — it may be that the Board’s prevailing culture is so fundamentally averse to true shareholder engagement that any third-party IR firm was never going to be empowered to do anything meaningful. Lancaster Grove may well be a figurehead appointment, installed purely for optics ahead of a potential redomicile. "See, we hired a new firm." But the machinery remains unchanged. The control remains firmly in place.

At some point, one has to wonder whether this entire governance structure is even salvageable while the Founder retains the decisive vote on every matter of consequence.

And so, like many, I continue to ask: when will the Board finally recognise that shareholders — their co-owners — deserve more than silence, vague reassurances, and occasional thinly veiled contempt? Or will they simply continue to manage this company as a private family business masquerading on the ASX?