3 ms·

My personal story on the unethical behaviors of a Silicon Valley accelerator

28 points by taken_username 10y ago

beaconstudios 10y ago
unless you have evidence that this accelerator committed fraud, I'd probably hold off on directly accusing them of scamming. I'm not a lawyer, but that seems like dangerous legal territory.
- popopobobobo 10y ago
  Let this guy have his freedom of speech.
- ivraatiems 10y ago
  It's perfectly legal to express your opinion that something is a scam. It's also legal to claim something is a scam based on your personal knowledge of a situation. It's only illegal (defamatory) to claim something is fraudulent if you know that it actually is not and are knowingly presenting false facts. IANAL, but I don't see how this post fails that test, unless the author is lying and knows it.
mikestew 10y ago
From my reading, the accelerator came across as disorganized and perhaps a bit over their head. I might even go with "not completely honest/upfront". But I'd need more evidence before I'd write them off as "unethical" or a "scam".
londons_explore 10y ago
I consider an AI startup to actually be one of the lowest risk kinds of startup. Your costs are your time for 6 months making a product, and a few thousand dollars worth of AWS credits or GPU's. That's it - you don't need a big team, special agreements, risk of warehouses/products. You don't need to run a loss-leading service to attract users or pay marketing costs. As soon as you find the first user for your tech, the signing of that first agreement will immediately make you cashflow positive. It's the ideal startup, and one of the few types of startup I would recommend self-funding entirely.
diziet 10y ago
Did they take a large equity share with onerous terms? It seems like things were somewhat disorganized and ad hoc, though you might have missed some information by not attending the sessions / etc. Perhaps the program didn't fully deliver on providing a lot of value to the company, but that's certainly not unethical or fraudulent.
valuearb 10y ago
The complaints seem sort of vague and whiny. Like not going to sessions because the first one wasn't useful because they somehow "knew" the others wouldn't be useful. Tell us how you knew that, otherwise it just sounds like you had a tantrum. And if you aren't going to sessions, why should the Accelerator invest further time and energy in you?

unless you have evidence that this accelerator committed fraud, I'd probably hold off on directly accusing them of scamming. I'm not a lawyer, but that seems like dangerous legal territory.

popopobobobo 10y ago
Let this guy have his freedom of speech.
ivraatiems 10y ago
It's perfectly legal to express your opinion that something is a scam. It's also legal to claim something is a scam based on your personal knowledge of a situation. It's only illegal (defamatory) to claim something is fraudulent if you know that it actually is not and are knowingly presenting false facts. IANAL, but I don't see how this post fails that test, unless the author is lying and knows it.

mikestew 10y ago

From my reading, the accelerator came across as disorganized and perhaps a bit over their head. I might even go with "not completely honest/upfront". But I'd need more evidence before I'd write them off as "unethical" or a "scam".

londons_explore 10y ago

I consider an AI startup to actually be one of the lowest risk kinds of startup. Your costs are your time for 6 months making a product, and a few thousand dollars worth of AWS credits or GPU's. That's it - you don't need a big team, special agreements, risk of warehouses/products. You don't need to run a loss-leading service to attract users or pay marketing costs. As soon as you find the first user for your tech, the signing of that first agreement will immediately make you cashflow positive. It's the ideal startup, and one of the few types of startup I would recommend self-funding entirely.

diziet 10y ago

Did they take a large equity share with onerous terms? It seems like things were somewhat disorganized and ad hoc, though you might have missed some information by not attending the sessions / etc. Perhaps the program didn't fully deliver on providing a lot of value to the company, but that's certainly not unethical or fraudulent.

valuearb 10y ago

The complaints seem sort of vague and whiny. Like not going to sessions because the first one wasn't useful because they somehow "knew" the others wouldn't be useful. Tell us how you knew that, otherwise it just sounds like you had a tantrum. And if you aren't going to sessions, why should the Accelerator invest further time and energy in you?