What’s more, Cannon-Brookes’ spokeswoman on Wednesday declined to confirm to us whether any of his super remained in Spaceship (so make up your own mind).
Such was the superficiality of Spaceship’s stated commitment to provide exposure to tech stocks that it was fined in 2018 for misleading members, as 80 per cent of the fund was in boring index-tracking funds. Not to mention the fees were higher than standard My Super funds.
director spaceship Paul Dortkamp was this year banned from financial services for two years for incompetence, and former chief executive Paul Bennett copped a six-year ban for getting a junior employee to attain an Australian Institute of Company Directors qualification on his behalf.
Meanwhile, its superannuation products are burning piles of millennial cash, with GrowthX returning minus 19.5 per cent to the end of June; its investment product Voyager lost 47 per cent.
Spaceship was, and is, nothing but a fetid vehicle serving to vacuously hype the egos of tech bros, all the while (as a for-profit super fund) enriching its staff and founders at the expense of members.
Raising documents circulating readily admit “Spaceship has still not achieved the scale required to be cashflow positive”. If it was a trustee, it would be turfed out of the industry.
Atlassian’s stated core principle, “don’t f— the customer”, sadly does not apply to Grok Ventures.
It’s pure Cannon-Brookes, who stars the Australian Taxation Office of revenue via legally permissible domestic R&D tax credits and foreign-domiciled structures, owns more land than a feudal emperor, and insists that his wife annie is the one who purchased Dunk Island, as if her money is not his, all while competing with Matt Canavan for who can wear the most excruciating trucker hat.
However, Spaceship Super is all care but no responsibility, being the out-sourced promoter and marketer of a sub-fund managed by responsible entity Diversa Trustees. Diversa is the entity that has to decide whether arrangements are in the best interests of members, which perhaps it should.
The business and distribution model Spaceship runs on is so repulsive to regulators that Diversa has shut down similar operations GigSuper, Zuper, GROW Super, Brightday, MYONESUPER, Super Prophets, LEFS Super, McMahon Super and Map Super, to name a few.
But for Grok Ventures, Spaceship, too, would likely be consigned to the trash heaps of superannuation gimmickry.