In fact it does- until the minimum is met - there is no investment. hmmm… so there is no investment. Technically.
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This is all simple, we are sharing news about a joint venture here, it’s huge news I think. The investment part is great and very welcome, but it’s a small part of that whole deal. We cannot get pushed into over-hyping or making huge claims. So we balance between letting the forum know what we are up to as we always have.
There is a link on BttF about the deal and that’s great, but we cannot run the company or any deals we are making by committee really. When the whole venture is agreed to in detail we will publish the whole thing and hopefully create interest form similar ventures in the places we have listed. The investment is not the end of the matter, merely the beginning.
Basically we have secured this deal, in part, so far and need to get the next few rounds of meetings to agree the joint venture detail (MaidSafe Asia). It makes little sense to push this part beyond a forum post, we can scream from the heavens if we wished, but only to appear needy or desperate, not a great thing whilst negotiating.
So I think calm down, this step is done, there were many steps prior to this agreement and there will be many more. Rest assured we will continue to keep this forum updated with news as we move along, but we cannot really pander to every idea all members have, this is where the community need to trust our business acumen and appreciate the work behind the scenes is immense right now as well as critical in terms of conditions we require and also any partners will look for.
What we believe the community wish is that we show professionalism in these deals and also how we communicate our situation as we move onwards. I doubt very many forums and communities would be so responsive and understanding, but we are lucky here, so lets keep the luck and not have back seat drivers from the business side, but yes please lets have all the ideas 
We do not wish protracted conversations on a funding platform that may look like forward looking statements etc. I think that takes it too far. Here we can all do what we do best and that’s work together and move the whole project forward in the knowledge that there is not much we all do not know, but for sure till a deal is complete the detail will be scant at most.
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Also worth noting that BF are regulated and will have to make sure they meet these requirements. Not only does this mean they have to demonstrate that all investments are legitimate, but I believe they prefer all investment related discussions to take place on their forum to ensure that only qualifying investors are involved.
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Please let us know if you have any suggestions as to how we could best contribute to MaidSafe, other than through telling people, downloading the client, and investing! For example, my brother runs Freshfields Hong Kong office, so if you need any legal help, don’t hesitate to reach out.[quote=“dirvine, post:44, topic:11345”]
I doubt very many forums and communities would be so responsive and understanding, but we are lucky here,
[/quote]
@dirvine Believe me, it’s deeply appreciated. I hope it’s not too much of a distraction and won’t become one once momentum builds and the community grows.
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Nicks post on this forum was as conservative as it gets and posting exactly the same on the BNK forum could never be considered “over-hyping”.
Completlry disagree if…
Publicly traded companies announce pending deals all the time, subject to many.
This is hardly screaming from the heavens and is not sounding need or desperate. Its simply apprising the investing public that you are not sitting on your asses waiting for money to pour in. And if you want to talk about needy and desperate IMO some of the content of the pitch seems desperate.
Im on your team David. You need to leverage every ounce of this type of good news because you’re short a million bucks.
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If that news didn’t bear any direct relationship with the BTTF fundraiser, I agree that there would be no need to disclose it in the pitch. This isn’t the case here however: as stated by Nick earlier in the thread, this deal has led to a USD 600k+ increase of the funded portion of the BTTF crowdsale that puts it a stone throw away from reaching the minimum investment, and you haven’t confirmed that this was indeed an investment via BTTF on equal footing with other crowdsale participants (that is to say with the shares held via BTTF SPV, and 5% withheld on future dividends and exits) or if the funding counter was bumped by BTTF to reflect the investment although the investment wasn’t actually done via BTTF.
Given that this information will be verifiable in the near future since you will have to assign the shares in your share register, I urge you to be transparent now. I will take your answer to face value. If you confirm this was an investment via BTTF on equal footing with other investors, I have no reason to doubt your word so I’ll be off your back on that one. But I want a clear statement on that. I’ll keep digging that one until I get an answer.
ooooohhh… thats suggesting collusion. Too many people have to much to lose to play that game.
Perhaps you will allow us to know why this is so important to you? As a fellow investor in the BTTF SPV I’m very interested in finding out.
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I’m not sure how relevant this is? What am I missing?
We know the terms by which we invested, most invested before the ‘Asian player’ added a wedge. I don’t see how it is relevant or our business what kind of deal they got or if there were different terms for them that exist outside of the SPV? They might have loads of extra incentives, why would that be a bad thing or our business?
For all we know they have agreed to put 10s of millions in and this little bump was just a pre-deal amount to help the BttF pitch along. In which case I’d fully expect them to be getting a different kind of deal with some different terms, even they also share in the BttF SPV.
I’m a bit confused. Is this question based on the idea of fairness and is your concern that they might be getting more bang for their buck? If so, why does this worry you? You want people who are advancing the business to have a lot of incentive to do so, why do you think people give such big % to the dragons on dragon’s den? Why did IOTA just give several % away free to an asian partner to get them involved? I would have no issue with a partner to maidsafe getting better terms than me, while I sit on my bum profiting from their hard work.
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He may think the game has been rigged in favour of the 600K investors and some benefit, not offered to current sharholders, may be extended. There are 2 types of shares: A and B They would likely have bought A shares with voting rights and preferred status for any new offerings. Most here would have bought B with no voting rights and get behind preferred shareholders if there are more shares offered.
Nothing nefarious going on here IMO.
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yeah, seriously.
We (B’s) didn’t have voting rights from the start, so who cares?
Anyone can still come and drop a billion on “A’s” majority voting rights. Free markets, as always.
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Exactly, this is part of a larger deal and it will have differences, considering the whole deal. There will be board seats reciprocated a much larger investment into the JV itself and much more. That is exactly how it should be as well, otherwise it would simply be a share purchase and it’s not only that. The investment agreement is for the same price as anyone else for this part and will be voting shares, but the whole deal will include conditions on both partners. This is why we cannot outline the whole deal here in the forum. Thanks for understanding that @BIGbtc I know your on our team 
So folk can ask as much as they want but we cannot divulge negotiations before they are complete. It would undermine the whole project and everyone’s investments to do so. This investment though is fine to let everyone know about and not only that but why it has happened. I think that’s fair and knowing this community, expected. Not more though, at this stage anyway.
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That’s your interpretation, not mine. I have no interest interpreting this so long as things are disclosed fair and square. Up to each investor to interpret it based on their own sensitivity and experience of what business arrangements actually look like.
t’s not a secret that BTTF has been trying to help pitches reach their goals and so long as it’s done in the right spirit, it’s all fine for me: Synereo’s crowdsale was designed with both a token sale and equity sale contributing to the progress, and this propelled their funding to 288% and counting. Was this because of intrinsic popularity of Synereo? Not really, most of it was due to arbitrage. Yet it helped Synereo raise funds, and it was transparent, so that’s all good. BTTF allowed Loyyal to bump their deadline too. Was that a big deal? No, the question was raised, and Simon Dixon explained Loyyal got their “game changer” press release later than planned and had to bump the deadline. That’s fine. Even Maidsafe already had a small change of rules half-way with the Safecoin and mining contract incentives.
I don’t see how that would be a problem to announce that Maidsafe had only 6.5% equity to distribute this round, and a huge investor offered them to buy 600k worth of it directly, so they updated the counter to make sure the equity doesn’t get oversold, or had a specific arrangement with BTTF (600k USD definitely deserve putting the red carper). That would be transparent. Now, up to you to see that as collusion and pass on that investment or ask for a refund. I personally would see that as a level headed business arrangement to, whereas on the other failure to disclose it would be a lie by omission which is a whole different animal.
Then it shouldn’t be a problem to clear that doubt once and for all by making an unambiguous statement that the 600k investment was made through BTTF following the normal crowdsale rules, or make a clear statement to explain the arrangement on BTTF so that other investors are not misled to think that the growth they observed was organic growth from natural BTTF investors interest which could influence their decision (herding and FOMO are a fact).
I think David said as much here:
The way I read it the 600K investment through BTTF is through the SPV with same rules and conditions applying to other investors in the BTTF SPV. Then there will be additional deals with this company that will perhaps give them additional rights over those deals, but not the investment they made through BTTF.
@dirvine pehaps you can confirm this so we can put this discussion to rest once and for all.
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No this is not through the SPV itself but part of the same round. Large deals outwith BttF are included in the round. There are a few such options, but it makes no difference at all. The round is 6.5% and this counts in that round as you would expect, but it is direct and part of a larger proposition. If there were some VC’s with large holdings they may choose the same route, this is how that platform works. The SPV allows a lot of investors to be handled easily as a single investor on our records.
[Edit I should add the rules and provisions such as drag along tag along and pre-emption are all MaidSafe memo and articles rules in any case so all of our investors have those rights, to be clear pre-emption was removed in the beginning, but is being added back to the M&A as part of this round, so all investors have these same rights, regardless of vehicle they choose.]
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Thanks for explaining this David. Like you said it doesn’t impact the other investors that will be included in the SPV. They will still receive the same amount of shares in the company, through the SPV, that they would have had if the 600K had been through the SPV.
This news and the investment really made my week! Best of luck working out the rest of this deal!
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IMHO, I still think that had Maidsafe team wanted to raise funds on their own with direct investment from VC’s or JVs with tech companies etc or even geting a cheap loan from a bank it would be a piece of cake for them, after all whats 2 million pound in todays world. Anyway as a small time investor, I am very happy that the Maidsafe team had decided to go via BTTF route, while perhaps a bit complicated but this allows all community members here (after consultation with their spouse of course!) a chance to participate and be part of Maidsafe SPV, and I think that this is done by design by the Maidsafe team with their philosophy in mind which i admire. Anyway these guys are smart and honest and they have my trust. Great job on the fundraising, and I’m really looking forward to receive my Maidsafe USB stick 
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You are moving a lot of hot air trying to speculate about why I’m asking that question. This is called due diligence. Unlike what you speculate, my question is not interested in fairness. As I have already stated in my previous reply, doing anything necessary to allow an additional investment of 600k is fair game so long as it’s done honnestly. The BTTF counter is sanctioning investments in the crowdsale via BTTF, and interpreted as such by every small investors that may base their investment decision partially on how popular a project appears to be (not arguing this is right but this is a know behavior). Manipulating the counter leading investors to interpret a direct non-crowdsale related deal to be organic growth of the crowdsale with small investors would be (if this is what we are looking at here) extremely misleading, and at the very least should be accompanied with a clear statement on BTTF explaining that a part of the equity for sale was re-allocated to a direct investor.
In other words, what I’m assessing here is nothing else than honesty, and arguably honesty is a very important thing to assess when doing due diligence.
Now given that dirvine and nicklambert have now been replying quite a few times cherry picking my questions all the while ignoring a question that should be trivial to answer strongly suggests that the question may in fact be problematic. Again, this question is targeted to dirvine and nicklambert and is a simple yes / no question:
Have the 600k USD been invested via BTTF within the crowdsale stated rules as this is implied by the fact the funding counter reflects this investment? When I check the share registry (I will check the share registry), will I find only BTTF or will I see another shareholder listed there with 600k USD worth of shares?
This question is a trivial question to answer if the answer is yes, and a more thorny question to answer if the answer is no. And again this will be verifiable information at some point down the line.
So Iet’s hear dirvine and nicklambert’s answer and I strongly suggest that this time around the thought police refrains from interfering and trying to regulate what question I should be allowed to ask. It’s in no-one best interest to blow this affair out of proportion so let’s make sure it stays and dies on this thread.
Again if you just wanted a yes / no answer to question from Nick or David send them a PM and don’t post your question on a public forum. For someone that knows a lot about doing their due diligence you certainly don’t seem to know a lot about how a public forum works.
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