i like lee but he is shitting where he could be eating for the next 10-20 years, not smart.
Eric -
This is one of the few times I disagree w/ any of your posts.
What you have here is a company who didn't pay their employee and now the employee is having a meltdown.
I believe I know of the investor(s) you're referring to and if it's the same, you're right -- as big a pile of money as it comes. That said, I can't image for the life of me why they would want anything to do w/ BB. Even so, they would look at Lee with sympathy -- not with angst. It's clear Lee is saying what he is because he's owed a considerable amount of money and he's prob struggling a great deal.
It's not right to say that Lee is shitting where he's eating because he's going rebel due to not getting paid. If those investors are actually considering investing into BB (just as a coin flip), they would probably clear his back-pay if their interest was legit.
If I had a pile of money and wanted to blow it defining an industry, I'd never purchase BB.
The equipment is already worth pennies on the dollar. The studio could be recreated easily. There's nothing BB has that can't be replicated quickly.
For the cost of back-pay (and a little jelly to make a guy smile), the salvage value of the equipment and some design work with graphics/design team -- that's the true value of Bonus Ball unless there is unrealized revenue from a contract sale to a TV channel / production house...where BB couldn't survive long enough to collect.
Let's assume there's no revenue to "bridge" to---
If the investors were smart, they'd use BB as a case study of what "not to do" and make a go of it from scratch with their own brand, using 8-ball, basically do an IPT-like-redo but with fiscal responsibility. BB has no intellectual property whatsoever. What IP they do have, their own community (us) isn't sold on it.
If I was "that investor," I'd buy the equipment at salvage rates (or similar equipment), create a PGA TOUR-like logo (like what the IPT did), fund a 52-week tour in escrow, and make it happen from scratch.
I just went on a tangent- sorry. Back to Lee... No investor in the world, in the solar system, would gig Lee for doing/saying what he's been since he's crying foul on not getting paid as promised. As potential (better than 50/50) investor, they would look at that and immediately clear the back-pay if they really felt a strong return would be made with the BB brand.
English! was right - nobody would buy a company with visions of blue in their eyes UNLESS the company was sitting on IP that was so strong, it could dominate a market -- with the pile of debt being amassed to develop the IP to that point.
BB is just an idea - not IP - with NOTHING being protected except for their logo and the name "Bonus Ball." Since there's zero brand recognition outside of pool players on the internet (most players in my room have NO clue what it is), that defines the value of that IP. The barrier to entry with a tour is only the funding of the events itself. It's just money - no top-secret technology, no secret ingredient, no trade secret.
In conclusion, it's not right to tell players (employees) to pipe-up and not shit where they eat while they're not getting paid and sleeping in their car. The opposite is true-- it's disgusting to hang the employees out without pay in the way that they did while they negotiate a sale/investment. As the CEO, step #1 for BB should have been to get the back-pay covered in the first conference call. If the leaders of BB had any business sense, the Lee/BB meltdown never would have occurred. If they did have sense but can't git-r-going, then the fallout is all their responsibility, not their employee's.
Dave
