From Soldier Systems

Well that was interesting...

It is nice to see that sort of honesty, yet it also seems that he should have kept some of that private. As it is, the letter may as well have listed names of other disgruntled employees.

It sure seems like suppressor guys come and go a lot.  Its like they help build a product/company, then get butt hurt and quit so they can do the exact same thing over again with a new name.

Well this part was interesting "a 20% return rate and ship now fix later philosophy is acceptable, and the weight of devices is the sole determining factor above ALL else moving forward.".  Form the latest OSS threads I've seen this seems to be the root problem maybe.  If he was the CEO then why couldn't he fix all the problems?

Good luck, I am sure the OSS owners will not have any problem with that name.

Stuck on stupid.

I think he's saying that these are the new policies that he won't adopt.

And the machine rolls on...silencer guys are constantly coming and going it seems. From the sound of his statement, it sounds like a lesson in not borrowing so much money for your baby that you lose ownership of it.

And there would be 3-4 other companies developing derivatives of it. Based on what we're all seeing, that is not occurring.

IMO, for whatever that might be worth, the place for an OSS suppressor, assuming it does what is advertised, is in the field, in the hands of the soldiers who day in and day out could benefit from swapping from unsuppressed to suppressed and back on an M4 or M16 that is already over gassed. Otherwise the concept doesn't seem to offer suppression or pricing that compares to "traditional" baffle designed suppressors or offer a competitive price.

As far as the open letter, well, having been in Oliver's position, I can tell you that a CEO's vision and a private equity firm's or venture capital firm's vision may never match. A CEO is beholden to a Board of Directors, and the BOD is beholden to the stockholders, or at least the majority that voted them in. The BOD is holding the reins, the CEO is essentially the BOD's means for fulfilling their mission, wrt to management, objectives, etc. When the visions and the proposed course of action/business plan, etc, etc, are mismatched enough the CEO goes out the door. It can be very difficult for a forced out CEO to keep his mouth shut, so I am sympathetic, but keeping your mouth shut is usually the better course of action. I hope he doesn't get sued for libel/slander or potentially for intentional interference in contractual affairs and trademark infringement.

On the plus side for him, he only has a one year non-compete.

JPK

That's always bothered me about the OSS designs. Either they had an airtight IP protection on it or they didn't work all that well.

More of the truth about why QRF is basically having a firesale on the OSS cans....

Reads like a rage quit.

He should have stopped at "It is these philosophies, who unfortunately retain a majority ownership of OSS, which have forced my resignation as President of OSS and terminated my employment", followed by a signature block... although I'm still unsure as to how a philosophy retains a majority ownership, or fires you.

To the new OSS (Organization of Strategic Sciences:  In before the name change), please make something that is light, quiet, competitively priced, and appealing to other than the 'top tier' of Hk 'collectors'.  

Let me Guess.. Someone starts company. Company grows. .fairly successful. only way to get the next step is take on Corporate or Private Investment. Bean counters show up. Management decides the people that founded and got the company to where it is have been doing it wrong the whole time. People that are not personaly vested now call the shots. People that started the company gave up controlling interest to make it happen. They are now trapped watching what they built get molded into a Corporate Entity that only cares about the bottom line and how fast can we get a ROI. Milk it for what it is worth and bail out... Close ?

Close?  Probably not.  They had a product that was not good at competing for various reasons.  Id say the powers that be got tired of the path that they were on and had taken in the past.

and round, could save a bit of weight with a round design.  put a cover on if mirage is an issue

It's just an assumption...but if things were going really well at OSS, the majority ownership and the CEO probably wouldn't have irreconcilable differences.

Did anybody else have to read it several times before it made sense??  Reminded me of when I have to read lawbooks.  I think he could have said what he wanted to in about 1/3 of the space.

Yeah it's poorly written.

Even as an HK collector, their current offerings do not appeal.

Poorly written.  He's all over the place.  My guess is that he was coming from an emotional place rather than a rational place.  For what it's worth, the OSS broke the mold on traditional design.  I'm one of those people who believes that there is room for innovation in the science of suppressor design so I applaud his attempt to innovate.  To be honest though, I never had much faith in the OSS design.

Maybe it's just me, but I see silver lining here for a few reasons.... Sometimes, the creator of a thing is too passionate about that thing to let others provide input and improvements. It's an ego thing that needs to be overcome. Sometimes it's jsut a vision for how it could be. The world is filled with 90% solutions that are pretty damned good. Realistic corporate structure isn't necessarily a bad thing. It drives efficiencies and that may have been clouded by the inventor's dream/ego.

So here's to hoping that pricing can be brought down through efficiencies, steps can be made to streamline the design, and both OSS and Russ Oliver can move on with their respective lives. Seemed to work pretty well for some of the other manufacturers as well as the customer base.

I'm holding out for the Gen 20