Player: Once again you have encapsulated Wave wisdom in a few words. That is part of exactly why Wavoids, including myself, ponied up hundreds of millions to bet on a company completely bereft of a hit in 27 years, except for the rare exceptions like Dell, GM and a couple of other revenue-producers.
Myths of questionable integrity and accuracy surpassed real research and logical conclusions.
The grasping at straws was a continual thing. Remember when one hapless Wavoid asked another board about an ad for a product designed to "create a wave of interest."
"Is this Wave?" the hapless investor asked. Of course it wasn't Wave.
That is the level of research by some Wave investors. Yes, it was easy to fool these folks.
For me, it was Nicolas Negroponte and some other bigfoot techies who endorsed Wave by buying shares and being publicly associated with the company and its founder, Peter Sprague.
When Wave was sued by 13 investors for Wave's inaccurate attributing revenue to two PRs with IBM & Intel back in circa 2005, causing a run-up of Wave shares to more than $5/share (prior to any splits).
At the top of the frenzy, CEO Steven Sprague and CFO Jerry Feeney both sold hundreds of thousands of shares, reaping an incredible reward for Wave's own mistakes--compounded by a journalist's mistakes in reporting the news.
The suit alleged the CEO & CFO profited unjustly from Wave's inaccurate investor relations guy, David Collins, who said the "contracts" included revenue, which they didn't. They were merely partnerships. No revenue at all.
The strongly-supportive Wave shareholder group, convinced people not to bother with reading the lawsuit, telling them that it was merely a fishing expedition by gold-digging lawyers. Hardly.
It was a systematic take-down of the lies told to boost shares, and how both top Wave officers immediately jumped to profit from the misunderstanding.
None of the major allegations were refuted by Wave. Instead, it relied on a technical defense.
The case was settled in 2006 for $1.75M paid by Wave's insurers. Wave investors should have read the allegations in the suit, because it laid bare both the CEO & CFO's lack of concern for anyone else but themselves--pure greed defined them.
It was but one more instance of Wave supporters telling folks that highly material events were irrelevant or not important. It also typifies their approach to "negating" any negative comment about Wave or its mgt. especially by trickery and distraction and on occasion, by outright lying--no surprise.
One further point about the practice of eliminating any negativity, and inflating questionable connections and events to near fact status. The fact many Wave novice investors were especially naive, does not excuse the blatant effort by some to shape the public picture of Wave to be far different, far more successful and positive than the company ever was or hoped to be.
And yes, those who misled so many for so long about the truth at Wave's center are still at it. The spider and its web you mentioned so cleverly, may yet consume some tasty webbed morsel among others.
But perhaps the question should be, why would anyone now follow the advice of those who got it so wrong for so long and are still at it, coming up with predictions of big money for a Wave sale based as usual on a number of fictional elements like grossly inflating tax savings for an acquiring company into a figure as big as the sun. Hogwash!
Best wishes--Blue
