What does the future hold for Guvera?
With Guvera limping on despite mounting debts, executive departures and a failed bid to float, Steve Jones looks at how it got into this position and what the future holds for the brand-funded Aussie streaming service.
Speaking to former staff members and creditors of Guvera it’s clear the company has been struggling to pay its suppliers for several months. But where did it go wrong for the company which was founded on the Gold Coast with ambitions to take on the world?
Melbourne-based media agency Media Partners has been named as one of the major creditors of Guvera, owed $235,000, while PR company Edelman and Tennis Australia are also amongst creditors.
According to one former member of staff, alarm bells started ringing as suppliers began chasing Guvera for unpaid invoices at the back end of 2015. Soon after, staff discovered their super had not been paid.
“The wheels started to fall off towards the end of last year when suppliers were calling about unpaid invoices,” the former employee said. “Then someone noticed their super had not been paid. We all checked and realised we were all in the same boat.”
The news came as it emerged chief executive Darren Herft has quit as chief executive, with founder Claes Loberg taking over on an interim basis. Herft will remain on the board, according to Loberg.
Guvera’s financial woes were laid bare last month after the Australian Securities Exchange refused it permission to list. In doing so, it wrecked Guvera’s plan to raise up to $100m through an initial public offering (IPO) and left the operation teetering on the brink.
The Gold Coast-headquartered streaming firm subsequently placed Guv Services and Guvera Australia in the hands of administrators, and cut around 40 jobs from its local operation.
Since then, management have been attempting to draw up a rescue plan via a Deed of Company Arrangement (DoCA), in a bid to keep the company afloat.
Administrator Deloitte Restructuring told a creditor’s meeting earlier this month it will support a DoCA “if it is able to provide a better and more certain return to unsecured creditors than a liquidation scenario”.
The DoCA – should one be forthcoming – will be put to the vote at a second creditor’s meeting on August 1.
Along with Media Partners’ $235,000, other creditors include music licensing and royalty administrators, the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS) which together are owed $928,713.
PR firm Edelman is owed almost $34,000 while tech business NextFaze, which developed Guvera’s app and has been working with them since May 2012, is chasing $462,615.
Media Partners founder and managing director, Paul Tadich, told Mumbrella his firm worked on Guvera’s sponsorship of the Australian Open Tennis championships in January, and one other smaller project.
“We received some payment but not a lot. The $235,000 is pretty much the majority of what was owed from the beginning,” he said. “The Australian Open was a decent spend. We haven’t had any correspondence from Guvera and are sitting here waiting with a long list of other people.”
Tennis Australia is also among the listed creditors, to the tune of $285,000, according to documents filed with the Australian Securities and investments Commission.
Guvera has embarked on a PR and marketing offensive in the wake of the IPO rejection, with management looking to rebuild investor and advertiser confidence through a series of ‘This is Guvera’ YouTube videos.
It has also gone cap in hand to investors in a bid to raise $20m in a round of funding regarded as critical to the company’s survival.
It is unclear how investors have reacted, although one, who ploughed $100,000 into the venture but preferred not to be named, said: “I bet no-one is coughing up. They want us to give them more money? I have already invested a significant amount.
It’s not an extreme amount but I’m just an average Joe so it’s enough to think, ‘fuck, that’s not the sort of money I want to lose’.”
A picture of mounting debt
Any reluctance by its 3,000 investors to stump up further cash will come as little surprise given the precarious financial situation of a business that has already swallowed $180m since it was founded in 2008.
Revenue in the 2015 financial year hit a paltry $1.2m with losses of $81m, up from $29m the previous year. In the first nine months of the 2016 financial year it lost a further $80m, according to the IPO prospectus.
Not that Guvera among the music streaming firms has been alone in struggling. Spotify, Pandora and Deeza have all limped along financially, as Guvera chief executive Darren Herft reminded viewers in one of the YouTube videos.
“Lots of others are facing challenges in delivering profits,” he said.
While undoubtedly true, observers will point out than none have put subsidiaries into voluntary administration.
Guvera’s capital raising was conducted by AMMA Private Equity, a company founded by Herft in 2008, the same year Guvera was launched by Herft and Claes Loberg, who lists creative director at ad agency Cocojambo among his previous roles.
Through accountants affiliated with AMMA, shares were sold to investors who, Herft conceded in an interview with Mumbrella last July, could be described as “mum and dad investors”.
But many, he added, were “very wealthy individuals”, while large investment funds were also coming on board. However, a flagged $100m investment from JP Morgan fell over, leaving a gaping hole in its finances.
The strategy, Herft said, was to rapidly build a huge customer base that would not only bring value to shareholders but “substantially increase the value of our business more than people in Australia can understand”.
“That is our focus. Behind that growth comes revenue, then profit,” he said at the time. “We obviously understand that the business model we are putting forward needs to have a planned strategy and model to be very profitable in the future, which we believe we have.
“But is profit something we are going to strive for in the next two to three years? No, because that would be to the detriment of growth and value to our shareholders.”
If nothing else, no-one can disagree with Herft’s assertion that revenue and profit were not Guvera’s priority.
With Guvera set on increasing the number of users, Herft needed to spread the word, and in 2015 signed a partnership with Channel Nine’s The Voice to market the platform to the masses.
One source with knowledge of the deal described such commercial partnerships as “cost neutral” for Guvera, but it did succeed in elevating brand awareness.
“There was good sentiment in the industry after The Voice. It made people sit up and take notice and it seemed to be heading in the right direction,” the source said.
But there were underlying concerns around the business model which ultimately led to occasional users being downgraded to a service that required Guvera to pay less money to record labels and artists.
Revenue, meanwhile, only dribbled in compared to the huge costs of buying content.
One shareholder, Richard Kratochwil, who invested in 2014, believed there had been “a little bit of deception” when AMMA representatives encouraged him to buy shares.
“I wouldn’t say it was fully deceptive, more a stretching of the truth you might say,” he told Mumbrella.
We were being told there would be an IPO towards the end of the year (2014) and they kept making comparisons with the likes of Facebook and Twitter and saying how all the tech giants started small. The sky was the limit.
“In my view, they tried to move into other countries too quickly. Wouldn’t it have been prudent to make Australia successful, move into New Zealand and then Indonesia instead of trying to build this worldwide company? The reality was that it was building a house of cards.”
Some of Guvera’s top investors were put up by AMMA for two nights in the lavish Versace Hotel on the Gold Coast last year and presented with Guvera’s vision, as well as being told of other AMMA investments, which now include Kwickie, an app which promises to connect fans with celebrities.
Herft, who is a director of Kwickie, has overseen the investment of more than $160m for mobile, internet and digital media companies since 2014.
“Darren Herft was there and we were told they wanted 50m users by Christmas,” one attendee said.
The Blinkbox debacle and declining user experience
In Guvera’s IPO prospectus, which has been removed from its website, the company said it had 14m users across 10 countries, with India – regarded as a pivotal market – responsible for almost half of those.
Kratochwil said clear mistakes have been made, notably the decision to acquire Blinkbox from British supermarket Tesco, a deal designed to provide a foothold for Guvera in the UK.
Within six months of the acquisition, Blinkbox had gone into administration with Herft admitting a planned restructure would simply have drained too much cash.
That acquisition subsequently spiralled into a bitter and messy legal dispute between Guvera, former Blinkbox staff and Guvera’s UK director Michael De Vere, with Herft claiming De Vere “executed an agreement” to acquire Blinkbox “without lawful authority”.
According to sources, another fundamental issue for Guvera has been the declining quality of the user experience which, once highly regarded, has fallen away after two major product updates.
Initially, Guvera offered two free services; Play+ which offered music on-demand, and Play, which allowed users to stream in a shuffle, or “radio-like environment”.
The first change saw Play+ users downgraded to the inferior Play service if they listened to fewer than 10 hours of music per month.
By way of explanation, Guvera said Play+ attracted a larger fee per customer compared to Play.
“Currently, we have to pay the rights holders the same PLAY+ fee whether a PLAY+ customer streams hours of music per month, or streams just one track,” the company said. “To ensure that we are paying rights holders the larger fee for active customers on PLAY+, we now require members to stream a minimum amount of 10 hours each calendar month.”
Then, on July 1 – after the failed IPO – Play+ was scrapped altogether with Guvera offering just Play and an ad-free subscription model, Platinum, costing $9.99 per month.
While stating a “free music service to our customers has been a priority”, Guvera said “the time has come for us to refine our product offering in Australia in order to ensure long-term sustainability”.
The result of the updates was a host of angry users who lost playlists and who were suddenly being forced to pay for what had previously been free. It is believe the number of users has sharply declined.
“I was puzzled,” Kratochwil said. “Why spend all that money building a great platform, one that was easy to use, and then turn around and trash the brand in Australia?
“They have always been at pains to point out they want to grow users, but people have turned away because the content is just not there anymore. Why would you do that? That’s just dumb.
It would seem to indicate that they just couldn’t afford to operate the previous model and now need subscriptions.”
While subscriptions for an ad-free experience have always been available, the fundamental difference now is that users are being forced to subscribe for services that were previously free.
It is something the recent PR offensive has largely failed to address.
Herft, in the second of two YouTube video updates, spruiks how Guvera can connect brands to customers on mobile through branded channels.
“Guvera has built a very unique music platform. It’s a platform where any brand in the world can build their own music channel….specifically for their own customers and also to attract new business and new customers,” he said.
Herft added that such a branded channel strategy allows Guvera to build a “stronger and more sustainable financial model” by charging brands for a “mixture of services” including brand strategy, brand channel curation and development, monitoring and reporting.
That, he said, will be supplemented by revenue from traditional digital advertising, revenue that will pay music labels and artists for the content.
“That has been questioned in other music streaming services as to their ability to build sustainable long term revenue due to the high costs of being involved in the music industry,” he said.
In the only reference to subscriptions, at the very end of the three minute video, Herft said the revenue strategy will “sit alongside what we can do in the subscription music space”.
In Loberg’s YouTube video, posted on June 28, three days before the end of Play+, he says: “Guvera is a music streaming business but it’s not in subscription. It is in a bigger market of brand funded.”
One recently-departed staffer said Guvera’s self-proclaimed position as the champion of free content – designed for the 95% of people who “don’t want to pay for a subscription service”, according to Loberg – has been fatally undermined.
“Guvera says we know people don’t want to pay for music and that’s what they are still marketing. That was their point of differentiation, their selling point. But the free service is basically a shuffle. That’s what you get as a new member, and existing members have been downgraded, unless you subscribe. I don’t know how you come back from this.”
One former Guvera staffer described the upbeat and positive PR campaign as “hideous and insensitive” given the Sydney workforce, and at least 20 people in the Gold Coast office, had been made redundant.
The source added that former staff were incensed by a social media post by Claes Loberg just 24 hours after they were told they no longer had jobs.
“Claes got a new tattoo and posted it on Instagram with the phrase “here’s to feeling good”. I’m sure the 60 or so staff who were suddenly out of work weren’t feeling too good. It was completely insensitive.”
Loberg, in his YouTube video, continues to push Guvera’s different approach to that of competitors, describing it as a “unique beast”.
He insists that through its branded channels “advertisers become the curator of content rather than the disruptor of content”.
He also compares it to Ikea.
We do stream music sure, but just the same way Ikea sells hotdogs.They’re not a hotdog company, and we’re not a streaming company,” he adds.
But the worry now for Guvera is whether advertisers will stick with the platform in light of recent events.
Virgin Mobile, which signed a 12-month commercial deal last October offering 1GB of data to customers who use Guvera, said it remained “committed” to the offer, which ends on November 2.
“We are asking Guvera to keep us updated as and when they have more news,” a spokeswoman said. “Obviously we are keen to know exactly what is going to happen in the future. At the moment we are still committed to providing that offer to our customers.”
Joe Olds, Australia and New Zealand marketing manager for travel company G Adventures, said a recent ad campaign had worked well.
“The G Adventures music channel was launched in March 2016 and our advertising campaign with Guvera has just concluded,” he said in a statement. “The channel shall continue to be active on the app and we hope to continue to support it later in the year with further investment.
“The activity has proven very successful for engaging existing customers and new potential travellers, which has helped drive more brand awareness of G Adventures and our small group tour experience.”
Another key advertiser, Priceline Pharmacy, said it did not comment on commercial arrangements but was “aware of the current status of Guvera”.
Loberg and Herft have spent eight years developing Guvera, with the former declaring in the YouTube video that, despite recent setbacks, “music is just the start”.
“We are about to introduce more content, more features around social, film and television,” he said. “We have a long journey ahead and we are still as committed on that path today as we were one week ago and eight years ago.”
A report from Deloitte into the company was sent to creditor’s yesterday ahead of the August 1 meeting. Whether it contained details of the proposed rescue package is unclear.
But while they may want to see expand the service to other areas such a rescue package is very likely to determine whether Loberg and Guvera’s journey has, sadly, come to a premature end.
Hi Steve,
What a great summary of this absolute Mess, in my view the bottom line here is Greed
First up let me tell you I am an investor and I have been following this shambles from day 1 ……3,000 investors were sold into a dream of this will be like the next Facebook, their whole business model was based around the initial investors and the owners to make an absolute killing on an IPO . All the communication, seminars and feedback was driven around this event allowing the investors to ‘cash out’ . Over the years I have learnt if something sounds to good to be true it generally is . The management team headed by Herft should take full responsibility , he had no experience in this industry nor had he any experience or track record of building or growing 200m plus business. So the question needs to be asked Why did so many people invest over 200M on the record of someone who has little or no experience or track record…the answer is 2 fold The first reason is Salesmanship and Marketing…Herft does have a track record in Marketing and selling to accountants 1. Lies with Herfts relationship with accountants , Because of this relationship with accountants he found a way to get access to capital via the relationship the accountant has with their clients. Herft found the vein of gold via this relationship …he knew that all he had to do was sell the idea to the accountant and the accountant would then sell to their clients ( there was also Inducements to reward success).
In my view Guvera was just a means to an end for everyone involved, along the way as they left a trail of devastation and destruction and their focus was not on a Music streaming / Advertising / Branding product ( They have changed their model so many times reactively) but more on How much are we all going to make when we IPO….in one simple word GREED
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Blinkbox only cost Guvera $600k, they put no money in after purchase.
Someone needs to explain why they are so reluctant to talk about monthly ACTIVE user numbers. Registered users can be massively deceptive.
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Guvera is a great platform, no question,
But to much BS has been spun by people at the helm
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Well said
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Claes & his cronies are greedy self-absorbed crooks. They’re like used-car salesmen, but with dodgy ‘tech ideas’ that have no grounding in reality whatsoever. Look at the mess that was Hyro. I can’t believe anyone ever invested in their shoddy ideas. Glad the ASX stepped in. Do your research peeps! Also, the government should make it impossible for [Edited by Mumbrella] like this to be directors of businesses. I feel sorry for the staff that will miss out on wages & superannuation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dmhPgUJvnE
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I wonder if any of the investors did their homework on the people behind Guvera. Why back a tech startup when none of the founders have any prior involvement in the music industry or indeed a successful digital / technology business?
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Since G. is experiencing “where-to-the-money-suddenly-disappear” problem, their (Mr. H.’s) other business is suddenly demonstrating big investments: bulk advertising, cover-em-all PR activities, hiring tons of people; and showing up the similar approach: strange market and strange marketing, strange idea, no experience within the team, zillion dollars in promises, unclear accounting, etcetera, etcetera. Co-incidence?
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For all the talk by founders about ad-funded brand channels being the future of advertising, I can’t understand their decision to pour money into The House of Guvera – a live music venue they setup in LA http://houseofguvera.com http://houseofguvera.com/wp-co.....UE_DOC.pdf
How is this a viable investment for the business and advertiser return, given most of Guvera’s audience was India?
The whole thing appears to have little to purpose to the business strategy? Although it could be a rather valuable asset for the administrators to sell off!
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@ Abc-reader. I assume you are talking about AMMA and the continuous marketing of other apps like Kwicki of which Herft is a director. The problem here is ASIC need to step in and take action to protect the consumer. The accountants have a lot to answer fot here those who continuously allow AMMA to sell via their Data base should be now held accountable , ASIC or the accounting Bodies need to step in need to cut off his supply of Capital and that is via the Clueless brainwashed accountants
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Buyer beware,
You would think you could trust the advice from your accountant,
Wouldn’t you?
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Very well said, from experience with these guys I can safely say this was all totally utterly about greed, especially from AMMA. The quality of the product, user experience or happy staff were utterly meaningless to them, it was all about the money, inflating the fake numbers enough to get everyone a big pay day. They played the investor, with marketing bullshit and at best heavily misleading stats to back their flawed business model. Interesting that monthly active users was a taboo subject, everyone knew the 14 million was utter fantasy.
Classic example of business poorly run by people out of their depth for all the wrong reasons!
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Why are we still talking about Guvera? They are a ship of fools – a band of bloody pirates to be more precise. They continue to talk about having a plan. Seriously?! They have not had a plan since Day One. I worked with these idiots, so I KNOW the truth. It has always been about the Benjamins – seeing how much they could fleece from investors, so they could keep their sick dream alive. It was never about an ad-funded platform/business proposition, because, even after all this time, there has only been a handful of meaningful brands that were willing to invest in the charade that is Guvera. And, it has certainly not been about making sure artists and labels were paid what they deserved, because, the artists/labels were the first people Guvera stopped paying when the money ran out. Guvera is a FRAUD. Hopefully, like everything else crappy in life, if you stop thinking about it, it will eventually just go away. RIP Guvera…
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@ but wait , there’s more . Here may be the answer to your question The latest courier mail article published today talks of the administrators report and the content of same which I quote
Quote
The administrators also theorised the directors, who include Darren Herft and Claes Loberg – also on the main Guvera entity’s board – possibly contravened the Corporations Act by “not acting with standard of care and diligence required or in good faith by using their position and information”. Further investigations would be required, they said.
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I was invited to an “investment” seminar in 2013- run by a small time franchised finance Broker in conjunction with a Gold Coast accountant…
Really aggressive sales pitch was delivered about it being the next facebook..which kind of raised questions about why they were pitching it to small time suburban investors. The broker running it touted she had a shareholding in it and soon after the seminar I started getting calls from other attendees asking for comment as they had been told(by the broker) that I was investing.A quick check online highlighted it was all suspect…and I expressed my opinion of the same.
A Guvera guy later phoned me wanting access to my network ,offering 10% commission if I suckered anyone in to it. He offered commission by way of shares and cash(albeit cash was @ a lower percentage)
I have kept track of it since and its ugly from the front to back.
Further along the track I read they had also rewarded promoters and accountants with trips to Las Vegas and Dubai where the referring agents had all expenses paid(except flights for some reason).I checked the finance lady’s facebook and she has posted from trips to both destinations….
I don’t think its ever been about the business…it looks like Herft has [Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]…the establishment timing of AMMA was pretty much the same as Guvera-it smells like it was a cook up from the start
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@CA
Very interesting Post CA , I believe that I have read somewhere that AMMA deny offering cash inducements to Accountants or referral sources as Inducements saying that it is all above Board.
Yes Herft and AMMA are at the forefront but there comes a time when the spotlight should be shined onto the Accountants and Brokers that referred this to their Data base for inducements and accepting these knowing full well. Lets face it Guvera would never have got off the ground and Clients of accountants would still have their money in the bank if it wasn’t for the Brainwashed accountants Greed , since when has it been the accountants domain to give advise on highly speculative investments to their clients under the Guise of ” sophisticated Investors” , this episode has given Accountants a bad name and the Bodies that run them should be confronting this, I am sure there will be clients that will take action.
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I have to agree with a lot of the comments here. Coming from heavy involvement after being with a company that sold to Fidelity Investments for a massive amount and seeing them also invest heavily in these kind of operations at losses, sadly, I expected this to happen. I also lived on the Gold Coast and saw at the time the pitch for many inexperienced people to invest in this ridiculously amazing opportunity and had many of my friends calling me for advice if they should invest after being to this awesome pitch. These were not dumb people, but they were caught up in the bubble of Facebook and others. I told them – NO – for gods sake, no – and luckily none of my friends invested. It was always at a massive risk of failing, and the only people that should have invested in this are those that can afford to lose millions and know what they are doing. I have a startup on the Gold Coast, http://www.desygner.com which I personally funded with my co-funders and only now (after 66,000 hours unpaid between the team, and a ton of cash from us as founders), am I started to look for funding, well after the product is proven and the users are coming and money, and thus profitability is around the corner. To me, $180m is unfathomable, and sure I understand that there is always risk but this was just unbelievable – the way it was structured and the commissions seem ridiculous although I have seen it happen way too many times but normally affecting only those that can afford the losses as they have made billions. No doubt, being a local, I should support local business but this seemed doomed from the start, having to take money from people that did not know what they were getting in to. I find that sad and deplorable and it taints other solid Gold Coast startups to some degree from hereon. The people I feel for in this are of course the investors that lost money. The others knew exactly what they were doing and that is fair enough as I trust that they were trying hard in their hearts to make it work but were totally out of their depths with no risk to their own money – rather, they were being generously secured financially by the investors and side commission deals it seems. Overall, it is just another failure in the world, but this one I find extremely sad, as it was such big money from families that I have since met, from people that worked hard for that money. Would be great if there was to be a happy outcome for all, but I doubt it.
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I was approached by them in 2012 and they were looking for a PR agency. I met them, and sent a proposal. Never heard from them again. Cowboys.
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Hi everyone.
I am a large investor with Guvera.
Guvera has been burning cash as would be expected for a start up business of its type.
I have always found the team at Guvera honest and credible.
The media have slammed this company quite inappropriately in my opinion.
In the USA, there would have been support for this business. Sad that Australia ( media ) is bagging it so much.
I’m sure there are many things the company could have done better, but they’re having a go, in a difficult market with a, now, hostile media.
I wish people could see all the positives of this company and th fact that they have had to burn cash.
I don’t want to lose my money, and I don’t believe I will.
I know tough, painful decisions have been made by Guvera, but I have backed them with further cash. Time will tell if I’ve made the right decision, but I believe in the product, the people and the business model.
Rather than bagging this fabulous Australian startup business, I wish others would support them, or at least stop bagging them.
Let’s stop being a country of knockers.
Support innovation .
Support good people.
Support good business models, and please stop kicking a person when they’re down.
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@Ange – how the f*** can a company unable to pay its liabilities as they fall due even think about listing on the ASX?
“good people” wouldn’t do that surely?
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@ange you wouldn’t be talking this up just to protect your investment would you? …I am a shareholder as well and you just cannot stick your head in the sand and look the other way the facts are creditors and staff that have lost their money .Ange seriously look at the facts , I can’t count the number of emails I have received over the years promoting different things like Lenovo deal rake us to the world , In partnership with JP morgan to take us to IPO and provide100m in capital , USA is the biggest market , free music so to stop pirates and reward artists or of which never came off , you can’t blame everyone else other than Herft and management . Why do you think the ASX knocked it back , why do you think there are so many legal battles going on , why do you think there are so many disgruntled stakeholders, why do you think The administrators are looking closely at the directors for non disclosure and other breaches in the corporations act as reported by the courier mail today . Herft had no track record of managing a 200 m company let alone experience in the highly competitive music industry … Did your accountant disclose their commissions they received from AMMA to you to encourage your investment , there is an old saying a fool and his money is easily parted and if you have put more money into this debacle .. Well say no more.
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It’s hard to support a business that don’t pay their employees.
I didn’t get my salary for June and you call them “good people”?
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@ ange. As a shareholder you would have received todays update from Guvera and especially the fact that they are quitting the Australian Market , now please Ange when was this ever in their Business plan , They have spent Million and Millions on trying to establish this Market …Sponsorships of the VOICE , Sponsorships of Tennis Australia , Sponsorships of race Meetings in Melbourne ( for what reason God only knows) , Salaries and wages , Seminars the list goes on…all to just walk away … all thrown away in two sentences to Shareholders …and you are backing them with further Money ….I would be seeking a refund and in a hurry
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Well said …and just to confirm your point they have pulled out of Australia, when was that ever in their Plan?…especially after investing millions into Voice sponsorship, Tennis Australia sponsorship and for some Unbelievable and unknown reason into Horse racing sponsorship ( what marketing Guru thought that was a good idea and target market). Herft has lost interest and is now focusing on another start up where he can fleece more off investors called Kwickie .
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“here’s to feeling good all the time”
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I think it’s a great time for Herft/AMMA to return some of the millions siphoned off for ‘services rendered’ from the investors’ capital back in to save this ‘great business’.
And if they don’t, I guess we’ll all know why…….
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@ Ange: How can you even suggest that the people at Guvera are honest and credible? They have literally stolen your money (if you are, in fact, an investor), mis-managed an organisation and technology platform that had potential, walked away from debts all over the world (driving companies out of business along the way) and terminated over SIXTY employees in Australia without paying them their salaries and entitlements, or contributing to their superannuation accounts (for as long as two years). Does that sound like a group of people that care about anything other than lining their pockets with other people’s money?
I applaud the ASX and the media for doing their jobs. Guvera would have been more than happy to continue to mis-lead and deceive investors, as well as the general public, had it not been for the due diligence and courage of the ASX.
Given you brought it up, it would have been really interesting to see what happened if Guvera tried to pull their brand of hyperbole and nonsense in the U.S. They would have had their ass handed to them. Guaranteed. And, speaking of the U.S., Guvera just shut down there, too – with literally NO revenue to speak of after a year in that market. I guess the Americans know a scam when they see one…
I support innovation. And, while I was there, I did my best to support the organisation. But, I quickly saw that the leadership at Guvera are not good people – they are not ethical or honest – or the least bit compassionate, given what they did to all of us. I also learned that leadership had no formalised business plan, absolutely no understanding of the brand, no vision for the future. And, now that Claes is in control, no hope whatsoever. So, can we all just say ENOUGH?
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Agreed!
Australia needs to own a successful platform like Guvera, with them and JB HiFi gone it’s almost impossible for indie Aussie labels to negotiate licensing deals when there’s really only 2 major US owned platforms in the country doing business (iTunes & Google Play).
Guvera made some really bad decisions, they launched way too early with a sub-standard platform back in 2009, it was just terrible….if they gave it a few more years things could be way different and I wish that was the case.
Avoiding staff and the tax office?…..amazes me that they were doing that after raising a ridiculous amount of capital….someone in the business needs a real kick in the arse for that! But possibly some overpaid execs were part of the problem, not unusual when there’s so much cash being chucked around.
Really hope they rise from the ashes, it’d be a triumph for Australian business and a healthy delivery point for labels and content owners worldwide.
Streaming is a very busy space at the moment and we have a whole new generation of people who think music (And video) should be free…..watch the industry die unless royalties are increased, streaming is convenient for the consumer….problem is it’s cheap…which funnels down to no only the labels but the artists…..no incentive, no artists, no new music.
Peace.
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@ange,after recent breaking news RE India operations , I hope your seeking a refund of your latest investment.. None of that info in detail was disclosured to shareholders .. Get your money back before it’s to late
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Just like the Confidential loans that the IPO was going to pay back, AKA directors payment in kind. Wouldn’t be surprised if the new “Confidential funds” are a loan by AMMA, hence why so confidential.
http://www.theaustralian.com.a.....4d26faa9e6
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Accountants should stick to tax advice.They are not stockbrokers or investment advisers.
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