My Very Bad Euclid Discoveries Experience
Posted by Mark Nelson on 25th May 2006 | Permanent Link
There are a lot of so-called Angel Investors in Euclid Discoveries - the number is well over one hundred if my email inbox is any judge. Very few of these individuals fit the profile of actual Angels in the true sense - they bought their shares more in a tupperware party environment than in the high-dollar, well researched context we expect from a true Angel. And I don’t say tupperware party to insult the investors. These people purchased shares from other investors who bought large blocks, perhaps with the express notion of making a profit by reselling. (Note: every privately held startup I’ve ever been a part of exercises strict controls over who you get to resell your shares to. ED apparently didn’t do this.) Most of them bought from friends and associates who they trusted - just like tupperware.
Anyway, this results in a very large community of investors that are in my opinion being subjected to a cruel form of mushroom management. They are desperate for information on their investment, and the company is not particularly forthcoming, saying little and saying it rarely. And the poor folks that bought the tupperware shares are probably not even technically shareholders - they have no rights at all.
After a few very polite requests, I set up a board for these people - they said they wanted a place to get the news on ED.
Unfortunately, as the registrations poured in, there was no news to speak of. In two months the only real activity was
- A press release from ED announcing revolutionary technology, but no product timelines, releases, etc.
- A puff piece in the home-town Boston Globe.
- A non-puff piece in the Associated Press
Meanwhile, there was absolutely nothing on the board from the members - they had zero to say, so the only posts were from me. I posted a few judgment-free links to various articles and a few judgment-filled cricitisms of ED for their bad practices.
A small cabal of people in the in-crowd took strong exception to this, and went so far as to issue gag orders to the other investors. No problem, they weren’t saying anything anyway. There were also a few remarks questioning my motivation in the whole thing, often centering on the notion that either I wanted to steal ED’s technology or I wanted to grab some shares. (I did offer to try to be a seller of calls at 1 cent on the current dollar, but I think the logistics would be tricky)
In any case, one of the key members of the cabal, Tiny Angel, started a new board for the investors at http://www.euclidinvestors.com/. In the first week or so there was not really much news their either, it was similar to my board without my editorial slant. But Tiny Angel has taken the board private, so I don’t know what’s being posted now, although I can just about guarantee there is at least one post a week saying “be patient, why would ED show anything when they have the goods? People would only steal it.”
In any case, that’s cool, anyone who wants can start a bulletin board, and Tiny Angel can keep things on message this way.
As a coda, I’ll make a few comments about Euclid Discoveries, both of which are just my opinion. I have never seen any of their technology, and they have no products, so my knowledge is limited.
- The claims they make in their press releases are most likely gross exaggerations. Should they wish to disprove it, we can arrange for nice, unbiased tests that in no way risk giving away their technology.
- Watching the company in operation, I was applying an 80/20 guesstimate - meaning there was an 80 percent chance or better that the investors would get back 20% or less of their investment. Watching the last two months, I think that is optimistic, we’re moving into 90/10 territory.
- The most ominous thing about all this is the fact that ED doesn’t talk to anyone - investors, press, public, or even potential purchasers.
- Their notion that they will make a better mousetrap and then sell it to the highest bidder is not just laughable, but may turn out to be a critical error in judgment based on the Supreme Court’s latest actions.
- ED treats their investors like shit, which is particularly sad since there are a few “my life savings” folks in the pool.
Who knows, I could be proven wrong. But I’ve seen a lot of ducks over the years, and this one is quacking, laying eggs, and flying south for the winter.
May 26th, 2006 at 9:39 am
Mark,
While I respect your right to free speech and your own opinion, your “parting” shots in my mind come from an outsider who doesn’t have a clue as to what Euclid has or doesn’t have, a guy who doesn’t understand the difference between angel and institutional investors, and a guy who tried to parlay his distant relationship with current ED investors(via a blog) into his own gain with respect to trying to bring the company you currently work for together with ED. When that didn’t work out, you turned into quite the SourPuss!
Your tupperware comments couldn’t be further from the truth and is laughable at best. NOBODY got into this thing by re-buying units from current unit holders. You’re right when you say information to investors has been suspect at best in the ‘public” arena. If the people who are bitching are indeed bonefide investors and not part of an LLC, current information and status is and has been readily available. The founders have been as up front as possible with everything since the start, making no promises or “to market” dates. If that happened, that’s a shame and that person should’ve spoke to someone else who is more realistic as it relates to setting expectations. Where in the investment documents did it state that the company was required to give daily updates as to the status? I didn’t see it and don’t have that expectation and nobody else should either. This is where the difference between angels and institutional comes in. Moore’s Lore back in Sept 05, did an article on the fact that a small company has been able to keep the investors at bay because we are angels and not institutions. This model is an exception and not the rule. Software development of this nature is almost always hit and miss, as you should be well aware of. I personnally am glad there are no institutional investors as they would probably own a big percentage of the company by now relative to the time it has taken thus far. This scenario happens all the time! Small start ups get cash, miss deadlines, and the investor takes more and more of the company until when the company finally does have something, the founders have virtually nothing left.
What makes you think ED has to do all their work in the public eye? Are they any different than others that make claims of a new product, Microsoft? If CISCO developed a product that they didn’t necessarily want to bring to market and wanted to sell to someone else, would there be a bunch of public “hoopla”? I doubt it! What makes you think that you know what ED is doing currently, who they’re speaking with, etc? It will be sold to a private/public company and at this point those are the only folks that deserve a little looksy. Not you or the general public!
ED has ALWAYS kept me informed from the start! If other angels sunk their life savings into a “crap shoot”, yes a LONG SHOT, than that’s their problem and probably not very wise. ED owes me nothing! I went into this HOPING they would do something, NOT EXPECTING anything. That’s the nature of investing don’t you think!
I’m waiting patiently and so should you! It’ll all be over sooner than later, successful or not! Hopefully, the angels, founders, developers, and others associated with this will have the last laugh. Who knows! Calm down! You have no vested interest!
May 26th, 2006 at 10:52 am
So EDAngel, right now it is my understanding that the majority of the stockholders purchased interests in LLCs that were set up by initial investors.
Are you saying that this is not true? That there are no LLCs? That all shares in Euclid were sold directly to Angel investors and that no resale of interest in those shares ever took place?
If that is what you were saying, than at least a few dozen people who claim to have money in this game told me bald-faced lies.
>ED owes me nothing!
Interesting perspective. I bet more companies wish they had investors like you. You give them money, they owe you nothing. Makes one of you look shrewd, your guess as to who.
>a guy who doesn’t understand the difference between angel and institutional investors
Actually, I do, but I think what ED wants is not Angels, it is sheep. One of the key things any Angel does is due diligence - I see none of that here. Just as an example, any Angel investor spends an enormous amount of time working on determining an exact evaluation of their ownership. Tell me about how you guys did that.
Wait, don’t tell me. It went like this: “You’re all going to be rich!”
You might want to read something like this paper by people who actually know something about Angel investing - it’s nothing like what you are practicing. Read it. ED’s Angel plan seems to have had its greatest success in convincing people that they were angels and how angels were supposed to behave. Well done on their part!
>and a guy who tried to parlay his distant relationship with current ED investors(via a blog) into his
>own gain with respect to trying to bring the company you currently work for together with ED.
>When that didn’t work out, you turned into quite the SourPuss!
No.
I gave ED the opportunity to talk to a company with tens of billions of cash on hand and a long-time history of acquisitions. ED declined to demo or to talk. Considering ED’s professed business plan is to sell their IP to the highest bidder, dude, this speaks volumes. At that point I didn’t become a sourpuss, I just realized that they have nothing to sell. My sourpuss status is unchanged from 5 years ago when I first started hearing from people who where worried they had been scammed. Those people are still worried.
>It’ll all be over sooner than later, successful or not!
I’m skeptical about that. The way a deal like this normally ends is when they run out of money and fail to deliver a product. But Euclid continues selling shares to investors using the same mushroom model. I’m thinking they’ve developed a business model that can keep them going a long time.
The one thing I wish I knew more about was at what point the SEC decides a company has gone public by virtue of broad ownership. That would be an interesting angle of investigation for ED.
Finally, I understand your anger. As I repeatedly question whether the emperor is clad, you can’t help but feel I’m questioning your intelligence as an investor. It’s not much of a leap to understand that I’m saying you made a bad choice. That would make me mad too, and I might continue to fight back and defend myself in the face of overwhelming evidence that I was wrong. So I don’t take it personally. Keep taking your shots.
May 26th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
While I have limited academic research experience in compression, I do try to keep up with various compression technologies, as ultimately, data compression is interesting from a computer science theory, mathematics, and even a statistical point of view (at least in regards to lossy compression).
However, I tend to agree with Mark in that the lack of a demonstration, of any kind, suggests a great big bottle of snake oil.
May 26th, 2006 at 9:12 pm
Mark,
Thanx for your reply! Your bullshit and misunderstanding of the specifics continues and in my opinion will until this is finally decided, a great success? or a miserable failure and bad investment. This is like arguing politics or religion. So, stay true to your position(both of us), and let’s just let this thing play out. At this point, neither one of will have any affect on the final outcome. I’m going to cheer and your going to boo until the end. I’m actually looking forward to “the end”, and let’s wait until then to make further comments. At that point, we can initiate a new thread of posts that will either make you or me eat crow. I’m up for either! Have a great weekend!
May 27th, 2006 at 5:18 am
Mark and EDangle….It seems fair enough for anyone to make personal decisions regarding how they choose to spend their own money. We all make daily decisions concerning the distribution of our financial resources, and often these decisions are not conforming to those of the public in general, nor even amoung friends and family. Apparently several hundred individuals have made the decision to invest in the research of Euclid Discoveries. What I have not seen in the blog/board comments is much about “due diligence” vs “blind faith”. Most comments seem to support the later. I understand the funding activities began some ten years ago and continues, at least, until recently. I understand the company is privately held, therefore financials are not available to the public, but hopefully are available to the individual investors. I would think annual audited financial statements would confirm if the cash flows from investors are prudently spent in accordance with the objective of the investment, and not on the lifestyle of Mr. Wingard and Mr. Werner. If the financial statements confirm this to be true, critical opinion should stop. If the financial statements do not confirm (or have not been made available to prove) the cash flows supporting the proposed investment activities, one might wonder if the current objective might simply to be to maintain the lifestyle of the corporate officers.
May 27th, 2006 at 11:23 am
one might wonder if the current objective might simply to be to maintain the lifestyle of the corporate officers.
Yeah, FinanceGuy, I wonder the same thing. However, wonder too much, wonder out loud, and you might find yourself on the receiving end of some sort of civil court document, so I try to not go too deep there. They have had a nice ride so far, and of course, being private, we dont’ know what their comp package looks like.
I’m not a lawyer of course, but I did find this tidbit in reference to Google, who was more or less forced to start acting like a public company:
Now, I have personally heard from over 125 people who say they have shares of ED - although many of those people are actually probably indirect shareholders via LLC ownership. Could the real number be up to 500? If so, ED would be breaking the law if it didn’t start filing quarterly reports - but if I were in their shoes I would take the position that the tupperware owners are not shareholders, even though they think they are.
Unlike ED, I will go public with one prediction: In the year 2006, Euclid Discoveries will generate sales revenue of less than $5M, will generate patent royalty revenue of $0, will not go public, will not buy back shares from anyone outside the company, and will not sell rights to any patents or other IP. They will continue to urge their investors to be patient, and will state that they are very near some big deals.
Should I hit a home run on these predictions, I am going to roundly scoff at the ED apologists, and then we’ll work on predictions for 2007.
If I don’t hit a home run, we’ll have to evaluate crow factor. The ultimate crow factor would be a return to individual investors of say, 250% or better. (Some of them have been in for six or seven years, so 150% is like a balanced index fund - break even.)
May 27th, 2006 at 11:40 am
ED Angel, you called bullshit on me, but you didn’t answer some very specific questions that I raised in the first part of comment 2. Thus, I assume that you don’t have a good answer, and in fact your statement was false. That in fact there is a vast sea of people who have (or believe they have) ownership in ED via LLC tupperware parties.
So don’t pretend it’s just a case of us disagreeing over whether the company turns out well. The business practices I mentioned stink, anyone with any knowledge of investment would agree that they stink, and you are unwilling to answer.
You also didn’t answer any of the questions about the bogosity of angel investing in ED. And you know why? Because you guys aren’t angel investors. Angel investors by definition go through exactly the same processes of scrutiny that VCs do - they are in fact not much different than VCs. The big difference is that they fill a need for smaller investments. VCs don’t want to invest $100,000 for a potential $1,000,000 payoff - that’s not where they live. This is exactly where an angel investor lives. Your uncle can afford to invest $100,000, and a million dollar payoff would be sweet. Kleiner Perkins would have to hire an intern to manage that out of petty cash, and thus just don’t care.
You seem to think that Angel means deaf, dumb, and blind. In fact the ED community brags about it, talking about how institutional investors insist on a company hitting its marks, and when it doesn’t, squeezing them for greater ownership, etc.
Hey, you know what? That’s business! When a company doesn’t hit its marks, it means your valuation has gone done. The company OWES you something at that point, and it is completely normal practice to reevaluate. If you guys aren’t totally on top of this stuff, I will say again, the only thing you have in common with angels is your white outfit, because you are a flock of sheep.
In fact, I saw a public mention that ED sold some more stock just a while back to finance their payments to investment bankers. Tell me, did they dilute your shares? Do you know how many shares they are holding out? Did the board just vote to create more shares? Did the shareholders approve a new issue? Bet you don’t have clue. In fact, I bet the angel investors don’t even have voting rights.
Baa, Baa.
May 31st, 2006 at 8:18 am
Some food for thought, although perhaps not good food, or good thoughts, or even food. And some more.
Although these two articles are posted as comments to my ED article, they are truly just good things to keep in mind when trying to stay alive in this business.
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:55 am
Mark,
It may work out, it may not, but much of what you say regarding shareholder updates simply is not true. We do get regular updates. We know exactly how may shares are outstanding. We get lists of shareholders. There was a plan from the beginning on how the shares would be sold and it has been followed to a T. You mentioned that Euclid recently sold a few shares for the investment banker. Well, that sounds like great news. Typically, the investment banker is not going to waste their time unless there is something to sell. Maybe many of us are sheep, but we took a chance on a opportunity that we don’t often get access to.
Why would you think that Euclid would entertain your offer to refer them the Microsoft (as you know, there are not many companies with tens of billions of dollars)? I did some research on you I can’t figure out why you claim you are connected.
June 4th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
>Why would you think that Euclid would entertain your offer to refer them the Microsoft
>(as you know, there are not many companies with tens of billions of dollars)?
Well, Joey, I never said that, and you are in fact wrong, I did not offer to refer them to Microsoft.
But had I done so, let’s consider the question, why would they not entertaing the offer, or one similar to it?
The answers are simple and unarguable.
1) Because they said their goal is to sell their IP, and the implication has been that they expect the billions. Thus, a referal to one of the very few customers in the world would be accepted by any sane company.
2) Because it would be incredibly stupid not to.
and of course:
3) Because they have nothing to show and nothing to sell.
Take your pick, any of the three work for me.
>I did some research on you I can’t figure out why you claim you are connected.
I made no such claim, perhaps you need to reread the posts, or have someone check your work.
>Typically, the investment banker is not going to waste their time unless there is something to sell.
Who told you that? That’s just as foolish as saying a lawyer who gets paid by the hour won’t take a case because he doesn’t think he can win it.
June 16th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
I was just browsing and stumbled over this blog and the Euclid issue. While I know from experience that people who desperately want to believe in something cannot be brought to their senses, my scientific mind cannot let this pass by. So I will just say this once and you will not hear from me again:
I’m a master of science and I’m fortuned to have a very good mind. I know quite a lot about data compression and I really have had much fun with the ludicrous claims of the likes of Jan Sloot and now Euclid. So read this and be wise:
What Euclid claims is fully and totally BULLSHIT. It cannot be done. No way, never.
That’s it. I will not waist my time on explaining why not because it would be a mission impossible.
Okay, just one little hint: A movie of 90 minutes would already need at least 50 MB for the sound alone (in bad stereo quality).
If you still don’t get it with this hint: Forget it, you’re just too stupid. If somebody wants to believe in this crap anyway and even throw away money on it: OK go ahead but don’t say you weren’t warned by people who knew what they were talking about.
Anyway, who cares. Even if it was possible (which isn’t, I know for 100% sure), by the time Euclid would have finished their product, everybody has much faster internet connections and each portable player has way more memory than now. Next generation optical storage can hold many movies anyway. Who will be interested then? It would be a niche market.
June 16th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
Sorry, Whiz, if you’re such a genius, why didn’t you learn to spell and not “waist” (the correct spelling for this usage would be waste, by the way) your expertise commenting on a technology about which you know absolutely NOTHING!
June 17th, 2006 at 5:35 am
Interesting battle of words. Some from a self-described Master of Science with questionable writing skills, and a rebuttal from a self-described liason with Euclid Discoveries who responds with phrases as “Whiz is a Dick” and “Screw U”. Is it just me, or is the weather a little chilly at home office?
http://www.talkingtree.com/gallery/USA/Massachusetts/Concord/December2005/index18.cfm
June 17th, 2006 at 5:46 am
No Euclid Discoveries sign. Is suite 212 is upstairs?
http://www.artemisia.no/arc/3/omraade/usa/concord/30.monument.sq.ii.html
June 17th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
Hey, is that really their address? Kind of looks like a mail drop to me.
June 18th, 2006 at 5:26 am
I have no idea. I just “google’d” the Euclid Discoveries address and these pictures came up in the results. Maybe someone else knows?
June 18th, 2006 at 11:14 am
It’s an office building, you idiots! There are 3 stories — Euclid’s office’s are on the second floor. What else are you going to do to try to discredit this company? You know, if you keep this up you could actually find yourself in a libel or slander lawsuit!!!!!
June 18th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Woodford Reserve…(Isn’t this name trademarked?)…thanks for confirming the home office address of the company. Perhaps some have not had the opportunity to drive to Concord to personally visit the premises, and can now see what it looks like. I don’t know why you believe posting the picture discredits the company? The building is very stately, obviously historical, and apparently currently being used for some commercial purpose. So home office occupies space on the second floor, well good, if I had an office this would certainly be a nice place to conduct business. I also apologize for being an “idiot” and offending you.
June 18th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
You’re right….Woodford Reserve is trademarked — I ought to know — it’ my distillery!!!!!!! So………no problem with the name. I think you and Mark are a little too quick to jump to conclusions that Euclid is not on the up and up. I had my attorneys looking at their offering from the very beginning and not only are they on the up and up, they actually have what they say they have. And, trust me on this one, I have this on good authority from third party analysts who’ve been able to see and confirm that they have what they say they have. So, before you people take your next shot at Euclid, you might stop and think that perhaps they do have a legitimate claim to the intellectual property they say they have and also have the technology they say they have. Personally, I plan to laugh all the way to the bank!!!!
June 18th, 2006 at 7:27 pm
Woodford Reserve…..my favorite brand of spirits. Have a bottle in my cabinet, and several collector’s bottles on display. I also much enjoy the tour and the lunches. You are not correct in associating my comments with those of Mark’s. I am very much “pro” Euclid and sincerely hope you guys are right. I anticipate sharing the eventual excitement of your success, but can not financially, because I am not an investor. I was late to the party, but am looking forward to my investor friends teasing me with their “I told you so” comments. I assure you I have no personal opinion regarding the company, nor the investment, and have no right since I don’t have a dog in the fight. I only dabble in this blog because of curiosity. So… I toast those with the nerve to take a chance, and may your risk be soon rewarded. And if sucess is not to be, it is your money and not anyone else’s business how you choose to invest it.
June 18th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Thank you sir…Ours is a small batch bourbon and we’re mighty proud of it. I hope you have the Kentucky Derby collector’s bottles as well as our Breeder’s Cup collection. We also have a VIP and a Master’s collection. Helps keep my kids in shoes!
June 19th, 2006 at 9:07 am
>It’s an office building, you idiots! There are 3 stories — Euclid’s office’s are on the second floor.
Yeah, it just looks kind of small - if Euclid is on the second floor of this building:
http://www.artemisia.no/arc/3/omraade/usa/concord/30.monument.sq.ii.html
it seems like their operation is by definition a little smaller than I expected. They must have all their research flung around the country instead of onsite and the building is strictly for business.
I don’t think I have ever defamed Euclid in any actionable sense (which would probably have to be libel, BTW). I try to clarify my statements as 1) uneducated opinion, 2) educated opinion, 3) observation of facts or 4) sheer speculation. In our country, all of these are usually okay.
And I don’t want to cause damage to Euclid. I encourage anybody who is going to do business with Euclid to charge into it full speed. If they have what they say the have, you have the opportunity to latch on to a great product, so by all means check it out!
Finally, I don’t think I really need to do anything to discredit a company that has been in “imminent release of the biggest thing ever” mode for almost five years. They really need no help.
June 22nd, 2006 at 8:04 am
Thank you Mark for the thought provoking commentary. I find this very interesting and at least your comments are something to think about. Not merely blind leading the blind.
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:46 am
Mark, it looks like Tiny Angel has opted for a private email system to promote his position as liason for Euclid. Investors have again been asked to refrain from posting to your message board, and critical comments by “Poodger72″ on the EuclidInvestors message board have been attributed to you. I guess we are in a quiet time until either the investors again become disgruntled, or have begun taking their checks to the bank and want you to know about it.
June 23rd, 2006 at 8:23 am
The message board I created for Euclid investors is long gone, so nobody can post to it anyway.
But I can guarantee that I am not Poodger72 - Tiny Angel set up his board for a reason and I’m not going to rain on his parade.
He should have a pretty good idea who Poodger72 is, the board normally has a verification system for adding new members, and of course he can kick the person out without any trouble.
I’m not particularly happy about having somebody else’s messages blamed on me - sounds like somebody wants a straw man to kick around in the absence of anything interesting to talk about.
I might have to register with the board just so I can repeatedly deny that I am Poodger72!
June 23rd, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Mark for the record: Below are the two posts that relate to the Poodger, I fail to see how post #2 with a veiled reference be construed as blamed on you. Suspecting is not the same thing as convicting. It was meant more as tongue in cheek but if it offended you I apologize. Seems a little too sensitive for someone who has always been quick to challenge what ED has said.
1. OK Poodger, I am in charge of the E-mail group and all members of the group have to be confirmed as to who they are and if they are truly an investor. You may be a member of the E-mail group but have not revealed your Poodger screen name. So unfortunately unless you sent me an E-mail distinguishing yourself I am afraid I have to suspect you are not an investor and I am going to start to delete your posts as soon as they appear. If you truly are an investor and for some reason you want to remain anonymous to ED so you can take a more, shall we say less than positive stance, I don’t have a problem with that. So you must send me a PM or an E-mail to Kinsmang@aol and confirm you are in fact an investor or you are out. If you are an investor and can confirm to me I will keep your identity anonymous and you can continue to post. I will still have the right to remove any posts if I feel they are contrary to the goals of ED, its investors or becomes extremely negative. Unfortunately this is not a democracy.
2. Bye the way if you are who we suspect you, I may still let you post but you will have to reveal who you are and use your real screen name (MN) However you will be subject to stricter censorship rules. (Seems pretty fair to me)
Finally finance guy ED wants private dissemination of information so it goes only to the investors, Thus we are not always playing out our little drama in public. It is harder for people to attack if there is nothing to see. Ultimately it will come down to the investors whether they are happy or not.
June 23rd, 2006 at 7:43 pm
Tiny, I agree with you. I am only here out of curiosity, not to express an opinion about the investment, and certainly not to “attack” the company nor the investors. I am not an investment analyst and know absolutely nothing about video compression. I simply thought that investors were the original source of blog discussions, and that they were seaching for dialog. Apparently you are speaking for them, in that they prefer to keep their comments “in house”, which is fine. I only speculated that comment outside your communication vehicle would appear in public if at sometime in the future the investors once again were looking for dialog outside your emails or corporate communications, or that they might simply wish to brag about their financial success. Oh…I suspect “poodger72″ actually is NOT Mark Nelson, but a disgruntled investor. I tend to believe you are the one in the “attack” mode at anyone not sharing your position, as evident by anyone chosing to express any concern to the current status of their investment.
June 24th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
Dude, tongue in cheek or not (absent smiley face) you said:
>I may still let you post but you will have to reveal who you are and use your real screen name (MN)
Sorry, the only MN around here is me, and you’ll find that people generally take exception to misattribution. Don’t do it.
August 28th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
I thank each of you for the 15 seconds of fame provided by your commentary of my postings!
September 18th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Euclid DiscoveriesPosts More Claims…
Euclid Discoveries continues with their modus operandi, talking big and showing nothing. Now it’s a 5X improvement in compression over standard MPEG-4, at least in a press-release-ware.
……
April 18th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
One of my family members has purchased a large amount of stock in Euclid. He is the businessman of the family. Im the technologist of the family, and it’s like trying to argue religion with my brother to explain to him how the Euclid claims are outrageous and unlikely in the extreme. I’ve had friends at the really big iron technology companies read the press releases and hear the claims, and everyone thinks vaporware. The most cynical part of me takes one look at the tacky website and thinks this is a large fraud, but, much like believing in god, the easter bunny, and santa claus, i know i want to believe because it would be great if it were true for my brother.
I really do hope that the investors get their return. Fingers crossed for these people, and well wishes for the “engineers” of Euclid.
April 19th, 2007 at 3:27 am
I couldn’t agree more with you. What they claim sounds so lucrative and it could have been great if only it was more probable to accomplish that.
Anyway, best of luck to everyone involved. Do keep us posted on any updates.
April 26th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
The rumor on ED is that they have signed a very nice bank with personnel that can make this sale based on the technology they have. Why would a investment bank put time and effort into something like ED if there is not light at the end of the rainbow. Can ED actually have the technology and be in the silent sale process. In today’s world were information is available at every corner can this be possible
April 26th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
It’s funny Taylor, that was the rumor in early 2006. The investors were getting antsy back then, and were assured that the whole thing would be wrapped up with a bow in just a few months. Euclid plays their investors very well though. The primary method of selling shares in the company made sure that most of the investors have no rights at all, so they get to sit and fret about their retirement money and life savings, but they don’t get to take management to task for lack of action.
>Why would a investment bank put time and effort into something
>like ED if there is not light at the end of the rainbow.
One good guess would be that the bank gets paid for their time regardless of what happens.
Hope you don’t have any money invested.
May 8th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Mark- I personally know 6 Euclid investors, & they all couldn’t be happier with how things are playing out with their investment…one of the top investment banks in the world, that happens to specialize in technology co’s, is representing Euclid, & things are progressing quickly…it’s obvious from reading your posts over the past year-plus that you have a personal vendetta against Euclid. Why be a hater?
May 8th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
David, I’m glad these investors are happy. Of course, they’ll be a lot happier if and when they see some of their money back in their own pockets.
I’m not a Euclid hater, just a disbeliever. Over the last four or five years they’ve consistently failed to deliver on anything they’ve ever talked about, publicly or privately. I see no indication that this is changing.
People who dump their money into a loser often remain cheerleaders right up to the end, it’s some sort of financial Stockholm Syndrome. So be it.
May 9th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
It just seems like you’re a fairly smart guy…why not spend time on more fruitful pursuits? Unless of course your disbelieving rants are meant as some sort of public service..
May 9th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I don’t spend a lot of time on Euclid Discoveries. You can see that this was posted a year ago.
And yes, it is meant as some sort of public service. I had numerous inquiries for worried investors in Euclid, and thought it was worth responding to their concerns.
It seems odd that you would refer to this as a “rant”:
I don’t think there is really any strong emotion in it, and I don’t think I was pompous, bombastic, or windy. It’s a pretty simple statement of the facts.
What’s your connection with Euclid, “David”? You say you know some investors. Got any money in it yourself?
May 9th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Its not just Mark, you can talk to anyone who understands a little bit of technology behind compression and chances are you will hear almost the same thing. Euclid’s technology is not a secret, their patents and patent applications are published by USPTO and anyone can read them.
And Euclid is not the only company acting this way, there are a few more. Some may be well intentioned, but unfortunately thats not enough to get the investors the returns they expect.
May 10th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Mark, I think I’ve figured it out…it’s really the only plausible explanation- you must’ve approached Euclid at some point & tried to get involved….only to be rebuffed. I am not an investor, just a casual observer who happens to know some people involved. I highly doubt that worried Euclid investors would approach you to help assuage their concerns regarding their investments. I know the bank that’s taken them on, & the only way they get paid is if Euclid gets sold. That’s a fact.
May 10th, 2007 at 11:14 am
No, I can honestly say I haven’t made any attempt to get involved with Euclid Discoveries. The closest that I’ve come to any involvement was making an offer to set up a show-and-tell with my deep-pockets employer, which oddly enough, they declined.
If you think there are no worried Euclid investors, dude, you aren’t paying attention.
However, those who are staying in have incredibly high expectations - they’re thinking the technology is worth billions and billions of dollars. Which just goes to show that a lot of people aren’t very good at math. Even if ED delivered everything they have promised at one time or another, their product just can’t generate enough cash flow to justify that kind of valuation.
David, for the past four (?) years, somebody like you comes along every six months or so and says “just you wait”. And I do. Example: 12/28/05:
>Euclid is hopefully getting ready to be sold …
>didn.t know if you had heard about the latest news !
And after my skepticism:
>Always thought the tech sounded “too good to be true”
>but if it’s a scam , why are they still hanging around
>and why is CRAI Charles Rivers and associates involved
>with it AND why are top notched scientist associatd
>with it … like Michael Kirby and now K. Roy-Chowdhury
If and when any Euclid investor manages to even get their original investment back, I’ll congratulate their management team on their good job.
But I don’t expect that to happen.
May 10th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
It’s very obvious that you don’t expect that to happen. I’m sorry, I thought that their “product” (ie; intellectual property) carried with it infinite possibilities in terms of cash flow…the Boston Globe article from last year quotes a notable research director at Gartner in Philadelphia, Patti Reali, who says that EuclidVision could “change dynamics in the satellite industry”. She certainly doesn’t have a horse in this race, & the article was no home-town puff-piece. It’s clear that what Euclid is claiming to have is disruptive technology, & your “deep pocketed” employer doesn’t have it.
June 5th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
What’s wrong cat got your tongue?
June 14th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Did anyone else notice that this thread was started more than a year ago and nothing has changed since then?
June 14th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
The whole experience started almost five years ago for me, and it’s been the same tune ever since. Every six months a Euclid booster comes along and starts spewing bile, inventing clever reasons for me not liking the company, and promising a shiny, happy future with billions of dollars coming their way.
Some fanboy has even managed to slip them into the Wikipedia: Euclid Discoveries and EuclidVision. The article blandly asserts, without sourcing:
The submissions are from “CoolDude00″, who oddly enough only has four Wikipedia submissions, three of which are Euclidean! And I suspect the fourth is another privately held company looking for funding…
June 15th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Why don’t you put us out of our misery and ask JC if he know’s about ED. We have been told that NP of A&C and JC have had conversations. Told there will be talk about ED at SVC. Hope you don’t need the secret decoder ring to understand my post. So if you have access or you can get access, ask the question and then both you and the rest of us will know where we stand once and for all.
June 28th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
I first heard of Euclid through this article from the
Boston Globe and the only other information I can find is from blog postings. You mentioned the AP article. Can you post a link to it? I can’t find it online. Thanks.
June 28th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Kevin, Euclid has a copy of the AP story on their web page:
http://www.eucliddiscoveries.com/news/wp_20060514.php
July 2nd, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Mark,
Please give some insight on what you see possible for ED by end of 2007. What is your expert opinion? Do you know Kevin O’Conner, is this the UTube guy? Please be ojective. Smiley “..”
………………($$)
July 2nd, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Smiley, any expertise I have is in the field of data compression, not business.
As far as data compression goes, Euclid Discoveries has no product, so the future for them in that area is bleak. Being objective is impossible, because there is no data.
I don’t have any insight into what goes on at ED, but by watching announcements and promises to investors, my guess would be that back in 2001 or so they thought they were on to some super-duper breakthrough in video compression based on perhaps one msiguided engineer’s poorly conceived ideas on how to improve basic video coding.
By 2004 they realized that what they had wasn’t going to work, so they jumped on this new object-based compression approach, hired some experts, and took off after that. After working on that and making progress through 2005, they had something they thought they could show to the press and maybe drum up some interest.
Unfortunately, what they had looked pretty bad, but they figured by 2007 they would have it polished and working well.
The fact that we haven’t seen any demonstrations of polished product might lead one to believe that object compression is much harder than they originally thought - maybe not commercially feasible. Maybe today’s CPUs are only up to Clutch Cargo levels of object compression.
So I think what 2008 will bring is either a) no news at all or b) an announcement of yet another direction, the third Great Leap Forward.
If they pick a third direction, it would be prudent to choose something they can succeed at. Problem is, everyone has been promised earth-shattering technology, and I don’t think they are going to be able to pluck that out of a hat.
However, I do know enough about business to know that there is an upper bound on the value of any video compression technology. Investors seem to think that the upside potential is unlimited, but in truth, the only way to make a lot of money off video compression is end-user consumer electronics. And manufacturers of these devices are only going to pay so much to license a codec. The cash flow is easy to analyze. Even the imaginary technology that ED investors believe in is not going to be worth a billion dollars.
Check out the pain threshold of the manufacturers of DVD players in China - what it took for them to start developing their own video standard. They pay a couple of bucks for MPEG patents - and that gives them heartburn. ED is not going to come in and suddenly add a $10 fee to the IP tab.
Sorry.
Ask again in 2008, I’m sure things will be the same - unless the money is all burned up by then.
October 18th, 2007 at 11:04 am
[…] Euclid Discoveries have been leading their investors on with tales of incredible video compression for years now. No doubt that somebody, someday, might make a quantum leap in video compression, but for the past […]
November 11th, 2007 at 9:54 am
[…] in, are still hopeful that things might not be as bad as they look. Check out the comments to this post on Euclid Discoveries, more than a year has passed since this thread started and absolutely nothing has changed. Neither […]
March 17th, 2008 at 9:45 am
It’s March of 2008 - what are you hearing?
March 17th, 2008 at 11:59 am
@Katdar:
As predicted, it is 2008 and absolutely nothing has changed - except perhaps for a decrease in the confidence of the Euclid investors - nobody logging in to announce that the company will soon be worth billions.
Euclid did issue a press release in 2007 announcing a new hire, but that’s been it.
Last year I did a little work to see if the company was running out of money. I contacted some of the people listed as part of their management team, and found out that in many cases, they had only done some very intermittent work for the company and currently had no connection. These are people listed as part of the management team:
http://www.eucliddiscoveries.com/keybios.php
These people in some cases have open consulting contracts, so they may still have a relationship with ED, but they aren’t doing any work.
A public example of that would be Anna Gilbert, PhD, (whom I have had no contact with) listed on Euclid’s “management team” web page as “Consulting Algorithmic Mathematician”. Well, she must not be doing too much work for Euclid, as they are not event mentioned on her publicly viewable CV:
http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~annacg/
And of course, she seems to be fully occupied at Michigan.
It seems a bit disingenuous to list someone who is clearly nothing more than an occasional consultant as part of the “Management Team.”
But some of the people on the team are still full time employees, and say they are currently working for Euclid. So at least as of late last year, the doors are open. Maybe the small headcount means the cash will hold up for years and years.
I was also inadvertently bumped into the identify of Tiny Angel, one of the biggest ED boosters - he’s a chiropractor in New England. (In good standing and in practice at the time.) I’m not a detective, but I also think I possibly bumped into evidence of he and his wife liquidating an expensive asset in 2006, which would have raised a lot of cash. If he put that money into Euclid you can beat he’s drowning in flop sweat by now.
Euclid is still on the corporate listings of the state of MA, so I assume they are still in business, but they are definitely silent.
In addition to the comments on this post, you can get a sense for the boosterism of the ED supporters here:
http://mooreslore.corante.com/archives/2005/09/09/angel_investors_in_america.php#32297
And here:
http://www.c10n.info/archives/289
In the meantime, I suppose the investors are still seeing stuff like this from 2006:
April 14th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I don’t know anything in business field, but very interested in data compression.
First of all - why most of you are so pessimistic about new revolutionary technology?
I understand, if we are talking about random data compression or something like that, it makes me smile.
But (as I understand) we are talking about lossy compression technique, what makes possible great achievements.
Just imagine…
Let’s use some technique to store 3D objects, for example you can follow the link for video, to understand what I mean: http://movie.diginfo.tv/2007/07/11/07-0076-d.php
OK, now we have a bunch of objects. We can make it move and do any other morph operations.
Now it looks like cartoons and not realistic - that’s right. To fix this we could use relatively small amount of data to add some realistic effects (texture, some shadows e.t.c,), but even this effects could be calculated I guess.
Anyway, the bottleneck I see is that it’s work for some kind of AI, to encode/decode all this stuff…
Sounds philosophical, but still believable (-:
And I’m pretty sure there is no any significant reasons not to believe.
Regards,
Apo
April 14th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
@Apo:
I think the primary reason for skepticism centers around the business practices of Euclid Discoveries.
Obviously there are possibilities in object-based compression - in fact, the recent clarinet story shows just what one can do with a very accurate model - but much of ED’s behavior is reminiscent of behavior seen in other companies that have turned out to be duds, or worse yet, frauds.
This doesn’t mean Euclid Discoveries is a fraud, or is doome to failure, but given their claims, I feel the bar is set rather high for them to achieve any sort of legitimacy, and they really haven’t done *anything* to accomplish that.
Let me put it this way. If you had invested $100K of your retirement money as an ED Angel five or six years ago, and had been hearing hints that untold riches were just around the corner - but still had nothing to show for it, would the tone of your post be so reasonable and accomodating?
- Mark
April 15th, 2008 at 2:30 am
I’m not investor, but as any normal person I would like to see some working results for sure.
At least this “talking head” of news speaker could be nice demo (-: (ED mention this as an example)
Such king of projects could waste a lot of money (even if it’s possible to realize somehow). I think such projects could succeed like Open-Source. With several hundreds enthusiasts without interests on money but focused on the goal.
By the way - is there any company with revolutionary promises ever show some results to the public?
Apo