Hi Go,
This is not a family operation. I checked verity's history
through the SEC filing. This company was originaly founded
from silicon valley without Mr. Courtot. It was founded from
venture capital money from silicon valley. Find here some
info:
Mr Courtot. from august 1993 and I beleive he has some type
of contract that he should stay until 1998 or something like that.
My only fear is that verity depend to much on Mr. Courtot. Mr
Courtot is mentioned in several occasions in all verity disclosure
as "very hard to replace". He is also a major stock holder.
Mr Mc.Cauley. since 1994
Mr Hegelson. since 1996
Mr. Nelson. CO-FOUNDER
Ms. Bettencourt since 1995
Mr. Moore . since 1995 lawyer
Mr. Krausz. GENERAL PARTNER OF U.S. VENTURE PARTNERS III, U.S.V AND BHMS PARTNER SINCE 1985. HIS ALSO A DIRECTOR OF EIC DESIGN TECHNOLOGY
Mr. MacDonald. since 1988. director. he is also a director at
active software and a director at network computing devices
Mr Waite. since 1988. GENERAL PARTNER OF OLYMPIC VENTURE PARTNERS II AND VICE PRESIDENT OF NORTWEST VENTURE SERVICES CORP. HE IS ALSO
A DIRECTOR AT CELLPRO.
The situations is that Mr. Courtot plays a very important role
at verity. The problem perharps is that he plays a to much important
role. Since he is the president he has discretionary powers and
I am sure that it was his personal decision to hire his brother
in Europe. I see this as a good move, because verity has a
solid person in Europe to distribute verities products.
I dont know how long has the Mr Courtot brother been with verity
but so far I am not impressed at all with verity's sales in Europe.
In term of Asian operation, I am skeptical because they should
have hired local individuals for korea, singapore, japan, etc...
To be very honest, I am lately a bit nervous of verity stock
because fulcrum came out with good earnings (in contrast with
verity), microsoft has a multimillion dollar campain with their
free intranet,internet, windows nt index server, and windows 95
fulcrum finder and a lot of new competion coming out.
So far it appears that verity does have a lead in searching,
indexing, retreival etc...but if cheaper competion is on the
way with mediocre products, perhaps many people will select
other companies. I dont know what is the potential of verity
in term of stock price.
Also another thing that concern me very much is that i reviewed
the original verity prospectus and the latest prospectus and they
allways speak about big management changes. Why?
Take care,
Jerome |
