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Startup accused of scamming employees scrubs its online presence
- chrisbolt 10y agoFrom yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379518
- cyberferret 10y agoAs much as I dislike 'trial by the internet & social media', in this case there seemed to be a long enough trail and corroborating evidence from others that outing the CEO involved was a necessary public service to the community. He seems to be a serial abuser of his team and stakeholders, and the forging of payment receipts was just downright criminal. I hope there is enough evidence now for criminal action to be brought against him, and he is prevented from ever trying to run a company again in the foreseeable future.
- coldcode 10y agoI doubt they can succeed given its on HN.
- CM30 10y agoThis seems to happen a lot with companies and individuals caught doing dodgy stuff. Not sure why though, they do realise the internet doesn't just 'forget' about things, right? That the Streisand Effect will mean this information will be screenshotted and archived everywhere and that they won't be able to fool anyone else like this? Or that it pretty much 'confirms' their guilt for a lot of people? But yeah, not surprising this has happened already.
- danso 10y agoMaybe I'm naive but I was struck at how empty this company's mission and vision was (nevermind its ethics, which were well-covered in the original Medium post), and yet the founder and his friend/CTO put in so much of their own money into it. Were they complete greedy fools, or is VC money that easy to glom on to? WrkRiot didn't even have a "soon-to-be parodied by Silicon Valley HBO", TEDdy nonsensical ring to it, e.g. "its like Airbnb, but for your 401K". It was just a straight up dull and stupid "Yeah, we're gonna beat Linkedin" pitch, just as if someone were to throw $1M of their money behind the claim "We'll take on Google by using advanced AI machine learning!" According to their Crunchbase [0] (which could obviously be incomplete), there's no institutional investors listed in their initial or seed round. I mean it's one thing to waste other people's money on a dumb idea, but this seems masochistic. [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/1for-one#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/1for-one#/entity edit: Another befuddling thing besides the enormous headcount was the fact that the original whistleblower was brought in from Dallas and offered equity and a $135K salary and a signing bonus. That seems like a huge chunk of money for a marketing executive at a small tech startup. Again, ignoring the reality that he couldn't really afford her, what did the CEO imagine would be investors' reaction to such a pricey hire?
- wtvanhest 10y ago$135k for someone that really knows marketing is well worth it. The biggest red flag IMO is that the company didn't have product market fit, but hired a marketing professional anyway. Really, really bad idea.
- danso 10y agoOh I agree that a good CMO is worth the money. But -- and I know this is a silly question since the company under discussion seems to be fraudulent to begin with -- would a good CMO seem like a worthy investment for that small size and early of company, when it comes to showing your books to VCs to convince them to join in the funding?
- wtvanhest 10y ago
- jmspring 10y agoHonestly, one's record does eventually catch up with one. This is going to last for this individual for awhile (if not forever)... I've encountered people who reported title inflation on their LinkedIn page, oversold what they did, and when starting their own venture, due diligence pointed out severe faults the individual papered over. Good or bad, things will catch up with you eventually.
- paulcole 10y ago>Good or bad, things will catch up with you eventually. Any truth to this besides superstition, perspective, and cognitive bias? To me it's one of those things we tell ourselves to delude people into thinking the world makes sense. Also a great thing for a terrible person who's succeeding to say.
- xapata 10y agoI've known many terrible people who seem to keep winning for decades. If "it" catches up with you, it can sure take its time.
- tluyben2 10y agoIndeed (Trump...). And usually when it catches up (meaning getting fired, outed and pay some fines) I do not think they lose much sleep while laying on the deck of their yacht.
- flippyhead 10y agoReally? You've never seen people permanently harmed by bad things written about them online? We recently didn't move forward with a particular candidate for this very reason. I guess people can change their name but, baring that, the Internet lasts forever. And anyways, if you do the most basic of diligence on someone you hire or do business with, name changes and the like are easy to discover.
- paulcole 10y ago
- Hbthegreat 10y agoThis happens to more startups than you can imagine. I have been severely stolen from and defrauded of shares by a startup in North Carolina. They did it to several employees and investors and remain impossible to gain contact with even while appearing on podcasts with people like Randi Zuckerberg. Getting walled out of a business even with lawyers looking over documentation due to lies and deceit is a sickening feeling.
- paulcole 10y agoLOL just name names instead of making us hunt around.
- ryanlol 10y agoLawsuits yo, don't want to go around accusing people of crimes unless you've got lots of free time to spend in court defending said accusations.
- Hbthegreat 10y agoExactly this. Shouldn't be too hard to connect the dots if people really wanted to but I won't specify the names in public.
- ramblenode 10y agoI especially feel for the H-1Bs who were tricked into working for this character. Because they require a sponsor to remain in the US, leaving the company would also mean leaving the country and giving up a huge opportunity. Working through an unfamiliar justice system in an attempt to recover their wages is also very risky, especially if they realize the company is broke. I hope some good will come to them but I suspect this will just be a "life experience."
- wrong_variable 10y agoHaving being fired and then having to leave the country. The worst part about the thing is how dehumanizing it feels. "Here you have paid taxes for years ! please leave now, we just valued you for your economical output" It made me a stronger individual as a result, I know I am not owned anything. But you still develop an emotional link to your environment after being there for a while.
- coleifer 10y agoGod, this comment just reeks of narcissism and humblebraggery. "McMansion"...yeah, you really nailed it. All us yokels in the "rust belt" just can't wait to break into those 6-figures so we can buy our stupid chunk of the American dream. You're so special. Fuck off.
- koide 10y agoI believe the above comment is not talking about you McMansion buying yokels, but about the relative value of money depending on where you live. You can buy McMansions anywhere, just not with 135k.
- dang 10y agoPlease don't comment like this on HN. It destroys the already-weak cohesion we have in this community. It's easy to understand why you'd be angry about someone saying the things you heard there, and I don't doubt that the prejudice you're reacting to exists in places, but the danger with online comments—which have such tiny bandwidth—is that we fill in the gaps with things that weren't there. I suspect that happened here. Even if it didn't, though, we all have to resist the urge to lash out. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12395638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12395638 and marked it off-topic.
- coleifer 10y agoWell said, thanks for taking the time to put yourself in my shoes, and to also share with me how my comment hurts the community. I'll try harder to keep things on the up-and-up.
- laurentdc 10y agoIs it just me or there's an actual increase in scams among startups lately? e.g. yesterday's post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12384071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12384071
- SmellyGeekBoy 10y agoIt's a sad fact of the world that, where there is money to be made, there will be scams. I'm surprised it doesn't happen a lot more often tbh.
- 1812Overture 10y agoWhen there's a boom there's so much money sloshing around that operations like this can con enough VCs to pay their employees and quietly fail with their credibility intact. In tougher times they fall harder.
- chafporte 10y agoI take one Penny Kim over two Adria Richards.
- 20yrs_no_equity 10y agoI'm very fascinated by the phrase "disgruntled former employee". Obviously she's disgruntled, that simply means one is unhappy. But the implication is that because one is unhappy with their employment experience, one somehow loses credibility. Where is it, and why is it, that people who one minute will rant against evil corporations on the other hand when reading about how an employee was mistreated will blame the victim? (I'm speaking generally, but for instance when Amazon's practices came to light there was a bit of victim blaming going on here.) Why is the presumption of innocence for the employer so strong? This goes further into hiring practices-- if you look at it objectively, hiring practices are very one sided. Employers make the demands take all of the time for questions, will rebuff questions they don't want to answer (like what's the cap table look like? how many shares outstanding on a fully diluted basis? - things you need to know to evaluate the offer) while simultaneously demanding to know your salary history- and recently I've seen reports of employers demanding poof of salary history with the threat of termination if you don't supply it. Market forces can make one player have more power than the other, and in the great depression employers had a lot more power. but it's fascinating how the culture has enshrined that power, and people accept it. If you complain about an employer, this is not taken as a sign the employer is bad, it's taken as a sign you are bad. But if you complain about bad service at a restaurant, we don't assume you're a bad eater.
- aconcerneduser 10y ago>Why is the presumption of innocence for the employer so strong? Simple human group dynamics. In their "collective wisdom" a group of people, in this case, a company, simply can't be wrong. The disgruntled employee outlier is the one that's in the wrong. Human nature is to punish those who "rock the boat", even if they rock said boat with good reason.
- jdale27 10y agoGood point. It's the same dynamic as with burnout, where it's common to assume that it's the burned-out employee that is sick/weak, rather than the company.
- acheron 10y ago
- ryguytilidie 10y agoYou realize you're arguing with a complete stranger and telling them that the place they live is shitty right? Is there a point where you have an ounce of self awareness and say "jeez, I'm kind of a shit person."? Just curious.
- abritinthebay 10y agoRichmond is objectively a place with lower value housing. There's no arguing with that. You may not like it, but it's true - and there are reasons for that. Your original comment was talking about how cheap it was to live there. You getting offended by me pointing out why it is cheap says more about you than me. If you're ashamed of why the place you life is cheap... maybe don't bring up that it is cheap?
- ryguytilidie 10y ago"If you're ashamed of why the place you life is cheap... maybe don't bring up that it is cheap?" I honestly can't even fathom having a working brain, reading the discussion we had and coming to that conclusion. That said, with the quality of your argument so far, I can't say I'm the least bit surprised. Good luck continuing life as a pretty crappy human being while trying to justify it to strangers with snark! Sounds like a blast.
- abritinthebay 10y agoIrony: complaining about the quality of my argument when I've been using economic truths and you've been hurling insults. Grow up.
- sctb 10y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12399802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12399802 and marked it off-topic.