8 ms·

Powa: The startup that fell to earth

190 points by dan1234 11y ago

diskcat 11y ago
You need basically every merchant to sign up for your payment app to work. Otherwise people would just use credit cards, who have been here since forever.
- maffydub 11y ago
  I'm not sure you need every merchant - I think you only need a significant proportion of the merchants that a specific population use. I probably make most of my purchases with a very small group of retailers - for example, in terms of number (not value) of transactions, the sandwich shop by my work and the corner shop by my house probably account for 80% of my offline transactions. (I go to the supermarket about once a week, and although I tend to buy more, that's all in a single transaction.) If you could sign up those merchants, and give me a compelling reason (convenience, discounts, rewards) to use your payment app, it might not matter that I couldn't use your payment app on those rare occasions that I go shopping somewhere else. Just a thought. (I'm not in the payment industry.)
  - eterm 11y ago
    Local shops all accept contactless payment though, which is faster than anything involving a smart phone could ever be. You literally just hover your debit card near the terminal and you're done, no pin, no signing[* ], it's quicker than unlocking a phone. [* ] I've only once in my life ever had to sign for a transaction, it's not a common method, I just mention it here because I know some countries still use it.
    - zelos 11y ago
      Yes - I wonder about that every time I see an ad for Apple Pay or some other payment app. Contactless is rapidly becoming the default, so how do you compete with it?
      - woah 11y ago
        By only requiring the customer to carry one device.
      - Mvandenbergh 11y ago
        ApplePay actually works on contactless payment terminals. Since it has multi-factor authentication, you could potentially make larger transactions using it than you can with contactless cards. In practice that doesn't usually work yet because most payment terminals don't know that they can accept a larger limit from some payment devices. If your phone can do everything that your card can do (and a lot more!), why carry the card?
        throwaway049 11y ago
        My card never needs recharging. I don't use phone payment but if I did I would still have the card as backup.
        ghaff 11y ago
        I may just be being a luddite but there are 3 or 4 cards I like to have with me along with a little cash. I go back and forth whether it's worth carrying an actual wallet or not. I don't want to be in a situation where, if something happens to my phone (including running out of juice), that I have absolutely nothing else on me. (I also print out airline boarding passes unless it's not convenient to do so for some reason. I'm not fanatical about it, but if it's just 30 seconds of effort, I figure that I might as well.)
      - simonh 11y ago
        Most people have their phone more easily to hand than a card, which needs to be extracted from a wallet or purse. So in practice Apple Pay is often faster and more convenient. It's also more secure because you're authenticated by the fingerprint scanner, and it's anonymous.
        m-i-l 11y ago
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      I was just thinking "contactless payment", right after I did a Google search for the "innovative" CueCat.
Twirrim 11y ago
That article reveals a story that's one facepalm after another. An example of the worst "rockstar founder" attitude backed by apparently clueless investors. > Powa occupied two floors of the prestigious Heron Tower at the heart of the city of London, and had equally lavish accommodation in Hong Kong, New York and across Europe. Before having established proper cash flow?! When all their "sales" were just "letters of intent". How were investors even remotely convinced it was a good deal? > One of the more printable comments is this: "You don't employ intelligent, highly experienced people to treat them like something unpleasant under your shoe by telling them to forget everything they know, as your way isn't working" I wonder what the staff turnover was like? The only time I worked for a CEO who treated his employees with that little respect, they had a 90%/2 years turnover. No one was prepared to stick around and support someone who would send motivational emails saying "Ask not what your company can do for you, ask what you can do for the company" as the CEO was screwing up sales deals. I always wondered if he'd ever figure it out. Even burned my bridge there trying to help him understand what was going on during the exit interview. > According to several former employees, at one Christmas bash in Mayfair, strippers were hired to perform, to the discomfort of many present. Grew up idolising the worst aspects of Yuppie culture? > "While the company was going under, he's fooling around in a photography studio pretending to be Ziggy Stardust. The guy is a narcissistic idiot." Certainly sounds like it...
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  Just curious, how did things end up at the company you worked at? I had a similar experience with a startup out of college. On reflection, I should have noticed that among all the photos on the "mentioned in the news" billboard, the only familiar faces were the founders...
  - Twirrim 11y ago
    Still trundling along in a dead end race-to-the-bottom market. New CEO now, not sure what happened to the old one given he was also the founder, presumably he's in more of a board role or something. Unsurprisingly given the high turnover rate, I soon had no contacts left in the company and stopped paying attention. Without exception, everyone I knew has moved on to better things.
deleted 11y ago
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ttctciyf 11y ago
There are some gems at the glassdoor site referred to in the article. It is true, CTO did make whole team of people redundant on New Years Eve via voicemail - maybe 'how to' book on leadership taught him redundancy procedure. Led by a truly odious individual, this attitude is prevalent throughout the company. Senior management are relics of the 80's living off their success in the last dotcom boom (and bust), who believe the film 'Wall Street' is a training manual for management, business practices and team leadership. These were via https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Powa-Technologies-RVW3877050.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Powa-Techn... - looks like a signup would be necessary to get the full reviews. I noticed, though, that clicking through to the full reviews page, the most recent are glowing ones from Powa's head of development and head of sales ;)
eterm 11y ago
" The start-up said that adding its PowaTag button to sites would reduce the risk of customers changing their mind before completing a purchase " Instead they'll change their mind after it has been dispatched, costing the vendor more. In the UK at least distance selling rules mean that anything[1] bought on the internet can be returned up to 14 days later without requiring a reason. [1] There are of course some exceptions for certain product types.
Nursie 11y ago
I worked with them through 2014 and saw the NYE firing. Pretty brutal. But at that point the 'agile' team hadn't delivered in over a year. Badly mismanaged...
- chris_wot 11y ago
  What exactly happened on NYE?
  - Nursie 11y ago
    About 20/30 developers were fired via SMS on NYE 2013/14
    - busterarm 11y ago
      Support.com (NASDAQ and soon to be OTCBB[sauce]: SPRT) let go of over 20% of their call center by email/robocall that same day. That was a 'fun' year. [sauce]: https://biz.yahoo.com/e/160223/sprt8-k.html https://biz.yahoo.com/e/160223/sprt8-k.html
jaymzcampbell 11y ago
I had a meeting with their sales people back in 2013 or so, a few year anyway, and I remember thinking after the hour long pitch that the claims where entirely delusional and pumped up. It was "just" a QR code with an app behind it and ultimately nothing at all fancy but they spoke about it like it was a total paradigm shift in buying. I never got how they lasted so long, reading the glassdoor reviews over the past year it was clearly a sinking ship years ago. I honestly can't understand how they got nearly $100m in funding.
- Nursie 11y ago
  I saw it from the inside and thought much the same. The PoS product was actually pretty good...
- edent 11y ago
  Yup - same here. The whole product was just... meh. If it had been backed by a market leader or (shudder) a consortium, it might have had a chance of success. But a new entrant trying to sign up merchants individually?
  - madaxe_again 11y ago
    They weren't interested in working with platforms either - they were actually actively offensive when we contacted them. Probably something to do with Wagner's background at Venda, a platform provider he founded. Their users group call themselves "the prisoners of Venda"!
    - astrange 11y ago
      Might as well go for the pun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner_of_Zenda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner_of_Zenda
ianes 11y ago
interesting insight here into how Powa's management tried to manipulate the reviews on the Glassdoor site, written by an ex-CFO of Powa. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/powa-glassdoor-reviews-were-manipulated-steven-prowse https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/powa-glassdoor-reviews-were-m...
- abawany 11y ago
  (bit off-topic): it seems human nature to manipulate reviews (Yelp, Glassdoor, Google) especially when "anonymous". Seems like what is needed is a third party to verify identity and certify to the review site that the reviewer is real and from a real person. This hopefully will maintain anonymity unless a sub-poena is involved.
l33tbro 11y ago
Good riddance. Dan Wagner was basically Gordon Gecko via David Brent.
- VMG 11y ago
  I'll just leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHzKQdX-_KA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHzKQdX-_KA
  - Toenex 11y ago
    Link not working in the UK due to copyright. This one does though https://youtu.be/L3pXnzBPT98?t=27s https://youtu.be/L3pXnzBPT98?t=27s It's from a comedy pilot called 'Golden Years' which is very clearly a development step towards 'The Office'.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
drcongo 11y ago
The opening paragraph on the CEO's wikipedia page is a gem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Wagner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Wagner
- yitchelle 11y ago
  Another gem from wikipedia "His choice of attire (a Donald Duck waistcoat) to a media photocall ahead of the MAID IPO was considered responsible for reducing the value of shares by 10p."
  - MattyRad 11y ago
    Unfortunately a quick google image search for "Dan Wagner donald duck waistcoat" yields no results, but that would be quite something so see.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- petetnt 11y ago
  That guy really is something, serial entrepreneur indeed. Maybe he lost his mind during the dot-com bubble burst.
debarshri 11y ago
Story sounds quite close to what happened to boo.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com
- willvarfar 11y ago
  The CEO's wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Wagner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Wagner says: "Wagner remained on the board of MAID until 2001 and founded Venda Inc later that year.[6] Venda Inc is provider of e-commerce software originally built using technology from the defunct company Boo.com.[1][4] Wagner had acquired Boo.com for £250,000 in 2000 following the dot-com crash.[12] ... In 2007 he also founded Powa Technologies, an e-commerce business based on Venda Inc's small business solution, but with additional services for in-store and mobile point of sale and software for mobile payments called PowaTag and PowaPOS, formerly known as mPowa. Wagner introduced PowaTag in 2014, after receiving more than $100 million in funding.[15] Users of the service can make purchases using QR codes, audio watermarks and iBeacons.[6][16]" So Boo.com -> Venda Inc -> Powa Tech :)
  - debarshri 11y ago
    How can investors not see this coming?
  - TheJCExperience 11y ago
    Irony? https://youtu.be/jPPX3pYJ0Ys?t=687 https://youtu.be/jPPX3pYJ0Ys?t=687
  - dullroar 11y ago
    Later in the wiki article: "Wagner operates his various business interests from a holding company called Bright Station. Bright Station has revenues of $50 million and employs 450 staff." Am I the only one who thinks $111,111 in annual revenue per staff member is really low for a supposed tech holding company? The multiplier should be much higher than that (or they're paying slave wages plus stock options to make those numbers work).
hitekker 11y ago
One reminder I say to myself when reading stories like this: It can happen to you. Dramatic failure, maybe not: but there are plenty of startups out there in that gray zone of "we don't really know what we're doing but we have several redeeming qualities!" That zone, the upper 10% of "hyped" startups shall we say, are far more deceptive, and therefore dangerous, than the "obvious" bad companies, the bottom 90%. It's easy to laugh at all those investors who got hornswoggled by an out-and-out narcissist. It's less easy when the team is super- smart, the founders super-motivated and the only factors missing just happen to be what separates the 10% from the 1% who are truly successful. It could be product-market fit, work-life balance, or whatever the team needs at the moment. The only way to know is to be super-paranoid[1] Much like the stuff on /r/subredditdrama or /r/cringe, spectacles of human foibles convey "I'm better than the worst, so I am good." which, for me, translates into a false sense of confidence. [1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66863.Only_the_Paranoid_Survive http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66863.Only_the_Paranoid_S...
- julie1 11y ago
  Startup business backed by VC is kind of unsound. The traditional way maybe longer : minimal investment and constant self sustainability, but it seems also better at helping founder adapt to changes in costing and technologies. When you have 50 customers it is easier to recognize you made a mistake in architecture and change it. While aggressive market spreading with freemium lock you in faster and makes you less agile. Also you get very soon aware of your real costs. But, the problem is VC+startup tends to aggressively compete with sound business in a way that has nothing to do with pure merit but often just the capacity to access capital (which according to most studies relate to birth). I am an hardcore historical liberal, I don't really think that birth is a merit that is leading to a competitive market. Else, most of the leading economical nations would have remained monarchies. I also accept people have the right to live in dignity from their work and do not have to be all entrepreneurs. I kind of think people misunderstand what liberalism is. It is the right for people to choose a dignified existence through work with a clear contract of one hour worked has to be paid, and the right if people wishes to be entrepreneurs that have the possibility to access to a truly competitive market based on their merit without distortion. And like any liberal I think it contributes to prosperity wealth and happiness of the Nations in an efficient way.
coldcode 11y ago
Getting money from VCs is usually difficult, how do idiots like this guy scam $200M from people? Makes the VCs look equally stupid.
- d4nt 11y ago
  I think people generally assume that confidence is backed up by reality. I've found that one of the most useful sales techniques is to be friendly and polite but also very confident. People find it reassuring. Sounds like this guy took it to the extreme though, and lost all perspective on reality along the way.
  - cubano 11y ago
    Hmmm...yes maybe that picture of him in the Bowie getup was the giveaway for that conclusion?
- UK-AL 11y ago
  It's all about confidence and perception.
danso 11y ago
Sounds like some people were miffed that they missed out on Clinkle and overcorrected a bit too much.
spacker 11y ago
Dan Wagner talking about an employers' responsibilities to its employees https://youtu.be/Udc46TNfOtY?t=3m42s https://youtu.be/Udc46TNfOtY?t=3m42s
MattyRad 11y ago
Sounds like the startup was run by Russ Hanneman. It's eerie that the characters in Silicon Valley (the TV show) can be pointed to real life people so easily.
unfunco 11y ago
I've worked with Venda (for two separate companies) and met Dan Wagner and their platform is truly an awful piece of software, and the man himself isn't much better, my job was basically to find methods of subverting the software in order to do what our marketing team wanted. It's roughly £6k per month, and account management is slow to respond and it's very difficult to do anything meaningful with the technology. One of the companies is still with Venda with the intention of moving away, and one moved to DemandWare after roughly a year. Powa is Venda's answer to Shopify, trying to capture the smaller market, the software, and the management, was never good enough to compete.
- base 11y ago
  Some years ago Venda was sending C&D letters and suing any startup that had "vend" on their name: Alvenda, Vendder, Vendr etc. Overall an awful company. https://dockets.justia.com/search?parties=Venda%2C+Inc&cases=mostrecent https://dockets.justia.com/search?parties=Venda%2C+Inc&cases...
- dijit 11y ago
  I worked /for/ Venda in their platform operations team in London, and everything in the original article is as true for Venda as it is for Powa. We had herman miller aeron chairs and a prime piece of real estate in central london (by the Noel Coward theatre) but had never turned a profit, the Venda application was 2million lines of perl that could "sustain" 1 hit every 30 seconds, so most of my job was maintaining expansive arrays of caching systems. The upper executives and thick layer of middle management were smarmy and entitled, and the operations staff took it as a challenge and a matter of personal pride to make it work "Smooth seas do not make skilled sailors" was a common motto. I was once publicly berated for helping a customer on the phone because the management wanted to bill time for what was literally a 30 second change (I did it WHILE on the phone with them). They do a good job of soaking up all the perl developers in London though. also, FWIW: they sold the company to someone shortly after I left, it may be better managed now, but I can't be sure.
  - unfunco 11y ago
    I visited the office a few times between maybe 2008 and 2012, if you were working there then, we likely were in the same room at some point. I can't remember the exact syntax, but I used to find it hilarious that each Venda tag had to have a unique label, and since the code was notoriously difficult to navigate, everyone just ended up using random numbers and hoping that it wasn't used elsewhere. <venda_something label=5318008> ... </venda_something>
jorgecurio 11y ago
> the deal". Mr Wagner, who claims to have a stellar record as a serial entrepreneur, was still telling everyone who would listen that his was a company that would be bigger than Google or Facebook one day. As recently as last October, he told Evan Davis on Radio 4's Bottom Line that the business had been valued at $2.7bn by its backers Wellington. Evan suggested that was a meaningless figure because Powa hadn't made any money yet. "We're a growth tech business," Mr Wagner replied, maintaining it was other people who had set that value. holy crap this reads just like the interview with Pets.com in a 1999 edition of some PC magazine
CM30 11y ago
Wow, the letter of intent thing is kind of depressing. I mean, say what you like about Dragon's Den/Shark Tank esque 'business' TV shows, but that point comes up in almost every episode; a letter of intent is not a deal or contract. But no, a '2 billion dollar' business was rewarding staff for getting these. And yeah, all the expensive office space, fraternity esque atmosphere, manager posing for photoshoots stuff... it's like the company was set up and run by people who wanted the glamour of running a large company rather than those who wanted to actually make a viable business out of it. The whole thing feels like something you'd read about a dotcom business in the 90s, right before the crash.
ianes 11y ago
For those interested in seeing Dan Wagner in action, this is a video Christmas message (4.44 mins) sent to all staff in December 2015. Powa went into administration in February. http://youtu.be/sWhI5YK-_No http://youtu.be/sWhI5YK-_No

190 points by dan1234 11y ago

You need basically every merchant to sign up for your payment app to work. Otherwise people would just use credit cards, who have been here since forever.

maffydub 11y ago
I'm not sure you need every merchant - I think you only need a significant proportion of the merchants that a specific population use. I probably make most of my purchases with a very small group of retailers - for example, in terms of number (not value) of transactions, the sandwich shop by my work and the corner shop by my house probably account for 80% of my offline transactions. (I go to the supermarket about once a week, and although I tend to buy more, that's all in a single transaction.) If you could sign up those merchants, and give me a compelling reason (convenience, discounts, rewards) to use your payment app, it might not matter that I couldn't use your payment app on those rare occasions that I go shopping somewhere else. Just a thought. (I'm not in the payment industry.)
- eterm 11y ago
  Local shops all accept contactless payment though, which is faster than anything involving a smart phone could ever be. You literally just hover your debit card near the terminal and you're done, no pin, no signing[* ], it's quicker than unlocking a phone. [* ] I've only once in my life ever had to sign for a transaction, it's not a common method, I just mention it here because I know some countries still use it.
  - zelos 11y ago
    Yes - I wonder about that every time I see an ad for Apple Pay or some other payment app. Contactless is rapidly becoming the default, so how do you compete with it?
    - woah 11y ago
      By only requiring the customer to carry one device.
    - Mvandenbergh 11y ago
      ApplePay actually works on contactless payment terminals. Since it has multi-factor authentication, you could potentially make larger transactions using it than you can with contactless cards. In practice that doesn't usually work yet because most payment terminals don't know that they can accept a larger limit from some payment devices. If your phone can do everything that your card can do (and a lot more!), why carry the card?
      - throwaway049 11y ago
        My card never needs recharging. I don't use phone payment but if I did I would still have the card as backup.
        ghaff 11y ago
        I may just be being a luddite but there are 3 or 4 cards I like to have with me along with a little cash. I go back and forth whether it's worth carrying an actual wallet or not. I don't want to be in a situation where, if something happens to my phone (including running out of juice), that I have absolutely nothing else on me. (I also print out airline boarding passes unless it's not convenient to do so for some reason. I'm not fanatical about it, but if it's just 30 seconds of effort, I figure that I might as well.)
    - simonh 11y ago
      Most people have their phone more easily to hand than a card, which needs to be extracted from a wallet or purse. So in practice Apple Pay is often faster and more convenient. It's also more secure because you're authenticated by the fingerprint scanner, and it's anonymous.
      - m-i-l 11y ago
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    I was just thinking "contactless payment", right after I did a Google search for the "innovative" CueCat.

Twirrim 11y ago

That article reveals a story that's one facepalm after another. An example of the worst "rockstar founder" attitude backed by apparently clueless investors. > Powa occupied two floors of the prestigious Heron Tower at the heart of the city of London, and had equally lavish accommodation in Hong Kong, New York and across Europe. Before having established proper cash flow?! When all their "sales" were just "letters of intent". How were investors even remotely convinced it was a good deal? > One of the more printable comments is this: "You don't employ intelligent, highly experienced people to treat them like something unpleasant under your shoe by telling them to forget everything they know, as your way isn't working" I wonder what the staff turnover was like? The only time I worked for a CEO who treated his employees with that little respect, they had a 90%/2 years turnover. No one was prepared to stick around and support someone who would send motivational emails saying "Ask not what your company can do for you, ask what you can do for the company" as the CEO was screwing up sales deals. I always wondered if he'd ever figure it out. Even burned my bridge there trying to help him understand what was going on during the exit interview. > According to several former employees, at one Christmas bash in Mayfair, strippers were hired to perform, to the discomfort of many present. Grew up idolising the worst aspects of Yuppie culture? > "While the company was going under, he's fooling around in a photography studio pretending to be Ziggy Stardust. The guy is a narcissistic idiot." Certainly sounds like it...

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Just curious, how did things end up at the company you worked at? I had a similar experience with a startup out of college. On reflection, I should have noticed that among all the photos on the "mentioned in the news" billboard, the only familiar faces were the founders...
- Twirrim 11y ago
  Still trundling along in a dead end race-to-the-bottom market. New CEO now, not sure what happened to the old one given he was also the founder, presumably he's in more of a board role or something. Unsurprisingly given the high turnover rate, I soon had no contacts left in the company and stopped paying attention. Without exception, everyone I knew has moved on to better things.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ttctciyf 11y ago

There are some gems at the glassdoor site referred to in the article. It is true, CTO did make whole team of people redundant on New Years Eve via voicemail - maybe 'how to' book on leadership taught him redundancy procedure. Led by a truly odious individual, this attitude is prevalent throughout the company. Senior management are relics of the 80's living off their success in the last dotcom boom (and bust), who believe the film 'Wall Street' is a training manual for management, business practices and team leadership. These were via https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Powa-Technologies-RVW3877050.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Powa-Techn... - looks like a signup would be necessary to get the full reviews. I noticed, though, that clicking through to the full reviews page, the most recent are glowing ones from Powa's head of development and head of sales ;)

eterm 11y ago

" The start-up said that adding its PowaTag button to sites would reduce the risk of customers changing their mind before completing a purchase " Instead they'll change their mind after it has been dispatched, costing the vendor more. In the UK at least distance selling rules mean that anything[1] bought on the internet can be returned up to 14 days later without requiring a reason. [1] There are of course some exceptions for certain product types.

Nursie 11y ago

I worked with them through 2014 and saw the NYE firing. Pretty brutal. But at that point the 'agile' team hadn't delivered in over a year. Badly mismanaged...

chris_wot 11y ago
What exactly happened on NYE?
- Nursie 11y ago
  About 20/30 developers were fired via SMS on NYE 2013/14
  - busterarm 11y ago
    Support.com (NASDAQ and soon to be OTCBB[sauce]: SPRT) let go of over 20% of their call center by email/robocall that same day. That was a 'fun' year. [sauce]: https://biz.yahoo.com/e/160223/sprt8-k.html https://biz.yahoo.com/e/160223/sprt8-k.html

jaymzcampbell 11y ago

I had a meeting with their sales people back in 2013 or so, a few year anyway, and I remember thinking after the hour long pitch that the claims where entirely delusional and pumped up. It was "just" a QR code with an app behind it and ultimately nothing at all fancy but they spoke about it like it was a total paradigm shift in buying. I never got how they lasted so long, reading the glassdoor reviews over the past year it was clearly a sinking ship years ago. I honestly can't understand how they got nearly $100m in funding.

Nursie 11y ago
I saw it from the inside and thought much the same. The PoS product was actually pretty good...
edent 11y ago
Yup - same here. The whole product was just... meh. If it had been backed by a market leader or (shudder) a consortium, it might have had a chance of success. But a new entrant trying to sign up merchants individually?
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  They weren't interested in working with platforms either - they were actually actively offensive when we contacted them. Probably something to do with Wagner's background at Venda, a platform provider he founded. Their users group call themselves "the prisoners of Venda"!
  - astrange 11y ago
    Might as well go for the pun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner_of_Zenda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner_of_Zenda

ianes 11y ago

interesting insight here into how Powa's management tried to manipulate the reviews on the Glassdoor site, written by an ex-CFO of Powa. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/powa-glassdoor-reviews-were-manipulated-steven-prowse https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/powa-glassdoor-reviews-were-m...

abawany 11y ago
(bit off-topic): it seems human nature to manipulate reviews (Yelp, Glassdoor, Google) especially when "anonymous". Seems like what is needed is a third party to verify identity and certify to the review site that the reviewer is real and from a real person. This hopefully will maintain anonymity unless a sub-poena is involved.

l33tbro 11y ago

Good riddance. Dan Wagner was basically Gordon Gecko via David Brent.

VMG 11y ago
I'll just leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHzKQdX-_KA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHzKQdX-_KA
- Toenex 11y ago
  Link not working in the UK due to copyright. This one does though https://youtu.be/L3pXnzBPT98?t=27s https://youtu.be/L3pXnzBPT98?t=27s It's from a comedy pilot called 'Golden Years' which is very clearly a development step towards 'The Office'.
deleted 11y ago
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drcongo 11y ago

The opening paragraph on the CEO's wikipedia page is a gem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Wagner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Wagner

yitchelle 11y ago
Another gem from wikipedia "His choice of attire (a Donald Duck waistcoat) to a media photocall ahead of the MAID IPO was considered responsible for reducing the value of shares by 10p."
- MattyRad 11y ago
  Unfortunately a quick google image search for "Dan Wagner donald duck waistcoat" yields no results, but that would be quite something so see.
deleted 11y ago
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petetnt 11y ago
That guy really is something, serial entrepreneur indeed. Maybe he lost his mind during the dot-com bubble burst.

debarshri 11y ago

Story sounds quite close to what happened to boo.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com

willvarfar 11y ago
The CEO's wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Wagner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Wagner says: "Wagner remained on the board of MAID until 2001 and founded Venda Inc later that year.[6] Venda Inc is provider of e-commerce software originally built using technology from the defunct company Boo.com.[1][4] Wagner had acquired Boo.com for £250,000 in 2000 following the dot-com crash.[12] ... In 2007 he also founded Powa Technologies, an e-commerce business based on Venda Inc's small business solution, but with additional services for in-store and mobile point of sale and software for mobile payments called PowaTag and PowaPOS, formerly known as mPowa. Wagner introduced PowaTag in 2014, after receiving more than $100 million in funding.[15] Users of the service can make purchases using QR codes, audio watermarks and iBeacons.[6][16]" So Boo.com -> Venda Inc -> Powa Tech :)
- debarshri 11y ago
  How can investors not see this coming?
- TheJCExperience 11y ago
  Irony? https://youtu.be/jPPX3pYJ0Ys?t=687 https://youtu.be/jPPX3pYJ0Ys?t=687
- dullroar 11y ago
  Later in the wiki article: "Wagner operates his various business interests from a holding company called Bright Station. Bright Station has revenues of $50 million and employs 450 staff." Am I the only one who thinks $111,111 in annual revenue per staff member is really low for a supposed tech holding company? The multiplier should be much higher than that (or they're paying slave wages plus stock options to make those numbers work).

hitekker 11y ago

One reminder I say to myself when reading stories like this: It can happen to you. Dramatic failure, maybe not: but there are plenty of startups out there in that gray zone of "we don't really know what we're doing but we have several redeeming qualities!" That zone, the upper 10% of "hyped" startups shall we say, are far more deceptive, and therefore dangerous, than the "obvious" bad companies, the bottom 90%. It's easy to laugh at all those investors who got hornswoggled by an out-and-out narcissist. It's less easy when the team is super- smart, the founders super-motivated and the only factors missing just happen to be what separates the 10% from the 1% who are truly successful. It could be product-market fit, work-life balance, or whatever the team needs at the moment. The only way to know is to be super-paranoid[1] Much like the stuff on /r/subredditdrama or /r/cringe, spectacles of human foibles convey "I'm better than the worst, so I am good." which, for me, translates into a false sense of confidence. [1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66863.Only_the_Paranoid_Survive http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66863.Only_the_Paranoid_S...

julie1 11y ago
Startup business backed by VC is kind of unsound. The traditional way maybe longer : minimal investment and constant self sustainability, but it seems also better at helping founder adapt to changes in costing and technologies. When you have 50 customers it is easier to recognize you made a mistake in architecture and change it. While aggressive market spreading with freemium lock you in faster and makes you less agile. Also you get very soon aware of your real costs. But, the problem is VC+startup tends to aggressively compete with sound business in a way that has nothing to do with pure merit but often just the capacity to access capital (which according to most studies relate to birth). I am an hardcore historical liberal, I don't really think that birth is a merit that is leading to a competitive market. Else, most of the leading economical nations would have remained monarchies. I also accept people have the right to live in dignity from their work and do not have to be all entrepreneurs. I kind of think people misunderstand what liberalism is. It is the right for people to choose a dignified existence through work with a clear contract of one hour worked has to be paid, and the right if people wishes to be entrepreneurs that have the possibility to access to a truly competitive market based on their merit without distortion. And like any liberal I think it contributes to prosperity wealth and happiness of the Nations in an efficient way.

coldcode 11y ago

Getting money from VCs is usually difficult, how do idiots like this guy scam $200M from people? Makes the VCs look equally stupid.

d4nt 11y ago
I think people generally assume that confidence is backed up by reality. I've found that one of the most useful sales techniques is to be friendly and polite but also very confident. People find it reassuring. Sounds like this guy took it to the extreme though, and lost all perspective on reality along the way.
- cubano 11y ago
  Hmmm...yes maybe that picture of him in the Bowie getup was the giveaway for that conclusion?
UK-AL 11y ago
It's all about confidence and perception.

danso 11y ago

Sounds like some people were miffed that they missed out on Clinkle and overcorrected a bit too much.

spacker 11y ago

Dan Wagner talking about an employers' responsibilities to its employees https://youtu.be/Udc46TNfOtY?t=3m42s https://youtu.be/Udc46TNfOtY?t=3m42s

MattyRad 11y ago

Sounds like the startup was run by Russ Hanneman. It's eerie that the characters in Silicon Valley (the TV show) can be pointed to real life people so easily.

unfunco 11y ago

I've worked with Venda (for two separate companies) and met Dan Wagner and their platform is truly an awful piece of software, and the man himself isn't much better, my job was basically to find methods of subverting the software in order to do what our marketing team wanted. It's roughly £6k per month, and account management is slow to respond and it's very difficult to do anything meaningful with the technology. One of the companies is still with Venda with the intention of moving away, and one moved to DemandWare after roughly a year. Powa is Venda's answer to Shopify, trying to capture the smaller market, the software, and the management, was never good enough to compete.

base 11y ago
Some years ago Venda was sending C&D letters and suing any startup that had "vend" on their name: Alvenda, Vendder, Vendr etc. Overall an awful company. https://dockets.justia.com/search?parties=Venda%2C+Inc&cases=mostrecent https://dockets.justia.com/search?parties=Venda%2C+Inc&cases...
dijit 11y ago
I worked /for/ Venda in their platform operations team in London, and everything in the original article is as true for Venda as it is for Powa. We had herman miller aeron chairs and a prime piece of real estate in central london (by the Noel Coward theatre) but had never turned a profit, the Venda application was 2million lines of perl that could "sustain" 1 hit every 30 seconds, so most of my job was maintaining expansive arrays of caching systems. The upper executives and thick layer of middle management were smarmy and entitled, and the operations staff took it as a challenge and a matter of personal pride to make it work "Smooth seas do not make skilled sailors" was a common motto. I was once publicly berated for helping a customer on the phone because the management wanted to bill time for what was literally a 30 second change (I did it WHILE on the phone with them). They do a good job of soaking up all the perl developers in London though. also, FWIW: they sold the company to someone shortly after I left, it may be better managed now, but I can't be sure.
- unfunco 11y ago
  I visited the office a few times between maybe 2008 and 2012, if you were working there then, we likely were in the same room at some point. I can't remember the exact syntax, but I used to find it hilarious that each Venda tag had to have a unique label, and since the code was notoriously difficult to navigate, everyone just ended up using random numbers and hoping that it wasn't used elsewhere. <venda_something label=5318008> ... </venda_something>

jorgecurio 11y ago

> the deal". Mr Wagner, who claims to have a stellar record as a serial entrepreneur, was still telling everyone who would listen that his was a company that would be bigger than Google or Facebook one day. As recently as last October, he told Evan Davis on Radio 4's Bottom Line that the business had been valued at $2.7bn by its backers Wellington. Evan suggested that was a meaningless figure because Powa hadn't made any money yet. "We're a growth tech business," Mr Wagner replied, maintaining it was other people who had set that value. holy crap this reads just like the interview with Pets.com in a 1999 edition of some PC magazine

CM30 11y ago

Wow, the letter of intent thing is kind of depressing. I mean, say what you like about Dragon's Den/Shark Tank esque 'business' TV shows, but that point comes up in almost every episode; a letter of intent is not a deal or contract. But no, a '2 billion dollar' business was rewarding staff for getting these. And yeah, all the expensive office space, fraternity esque atmosphere, manager posing for photoshoots stuff... it's like the company was set up and run by people who wanted the glamour of running a large company rather than those who wanted to actually make a viable business out of it. The whole thing feels like something you'd read about a dotcom business in the 90s, right before the crash.

ianes 11y ago

For those interested in seeing Dan Wagner in action, this is a video Christmas message (4.44 mins) sent to all staff in December 2015. Powa went into administration in February. http://youtu.be/sWhI5YK-_No http://youtu.be/sWhI5YK-_No