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NZ teen's $220m ICO venture triggers official warnings

74 points by spondyl 9y ago

cableshaft 9y ago
Well he has a functional e-commerce website. Quite a few of these ICOs don't even have a working anything. But still, yikes. This is why you have to be careful around ICOs.
magicfoxs 9y ago
Makes us wonder how many of his previous 'achievements' were similarly exaggerated.
- georgedotsmith 9y ago
  Most, I'd say. He had another venture called "Share My Garage", which was a rental site that he has since stopped promoting. Ashutosh made repeated claims that Share My Garage had been accepted in YC when in fact it had not.
tdumitrescu 9y ago
"Sharma is presently a student at San Francisco's "Draper University of Heroes", a for-profit bootcamp for entrepreneurs that is not accredited to award degrees." You can't make this stuff up...
- fvrghl 9y ago
  There was a reality-show about it once called "Startup U": https://freeform.go.com/shows/startup-u https://freeform.go.com/shows/startup-u
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Well at least it's started by Tim Draper so hopefully the material is legit and they get some good contacts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draper_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draper_University
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gthartley 9y ago
Wow. >Despite claims of enormous turnover and traffic, a search showed around only 400 listings in total, many up to four months old. "A full 10 percent of listings of goods for sale on the site were found to have been placed by Sharma and his chief operating officer and University of Auckland student Dinyar Irani - the company's only two employees - with the pair trying to sell a soft toy and their NCEA schoolbooks. Alexa analytics, a service providing information on website traffic, shows unusual results for Sell My Good. The vast majority of visitors - 99.96 per cent percent - are reported to have come from only one country: Japan. Despite this dominance, the site has fewer than a dozen sales listings from Japan, and Google shows the site is only mentioned once in the country's internet domain.
askafriend 9y ago
Honestly, I don't know what to say to this. It's pretty moronic at every level but...it worked I guess? Bleh, I'll just go meditate now. No use in getting angry.
wccrawford 9y ago
>"They treated us as a joke. It's really bad, they think 'oh, he's a 19-year-old kid who knows nothing," he said of the market regulator. I would hope that the market regulator treats everyone as if they know nothing, and forces them to prove things. Not just this guy.
alexasmyths 9y ago
Poster Child for the Era.
Xeoncross 9y ago
> This week he began accepting investor funds, hoping to raise $220 million Do we have any proof that Ashutoush has actually raised anything?
- georgedotsmith 9y ago
  Their ICO website, which is currently down, had claimed that they had raised $1 million in the first 6 hours of the eCash token sale.
wyqydsyq 9y ago
The saying "Fake it 'till you make it" really comes to mind here. The kid is hoping he can lie and scheme his way to success. Sorry bud but that doesn't work with startups, maybe if you were already an executive at a multinational corporation where you have little accountability and any blame can fall onto the company, but if you lie as a startup founder your reputation and that of all your future ventures will be ruined.
georgedotsmith 9y ago
An update to this saga, "Teen's under-fire cryptocurrency offer withdrawn" http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11948672 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&o...
- spondyl 9y ago
  Ah, thanks for the update! I figured as much, since the ICO site had been down all weekend, but at least this trainwreck has been halted for now.

74 points by spondyl 9y ago

Well he has a functional e-commerce website. Quite a few of these ICOs don't even have a working anything. But still, yikes. This is why you have to be careful around ICOs.

magicfoxs 9y ago

Makes us wonder how many of his previous 'achievements' were similarly exaggerated.

georgedotsmith 9y ago
Most, I'd say. He had another venture called "Share My Garage", which was a rental site that he has since stopped promoting. Ashutosh made repeated claims that Share My Garage had been accepted in YC when in fact it had not.

tdumitrescu 9y ago

"Sharma is presently a student at San Francisco's "Draper University of Heroes", a for-profit bootcamp for entrepreneurs that is not accredited to award degrees." You can't make this stuff up...

fvrghl 9y ago
There was a reality-show about it once called "Startup U": https://freeform.go.com/shows/startup-u https://freeform.go.com/shows/startup-u
hkmurakami 9y ago
Well at least it's started by Tim Draper so hopefully the material is legit and they get some good contacts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draper_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draper_University

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

gthartley 9y ago

Wow. >Despite claims of enormous turnover and traffic, a search showed around only 400 listings in total, many up to four months old. "A full 10 percent of listings of goods for sale on the site were found to have been placed by Sharma and his chief operating officer and University of Auckland student Dinyar Irani - the company's only two employees - with the pair trying to sell a soft toy and their NCEA schoolbooks. Alexa analytics, a service providing information on website traffic, shows unusual results for Sell My Good. The vast majority of visitors - 99.96 per cent percent - are reported to have come from only one country: Japan. Despite this dominance, the site has fewer than a dozen sales listings from Japan, and Google shows the site is only mentioned once in the country's internet domain.

askafriend 9y ago

Honestly, I don't know what to say to this. It's pretty moronic at every level but...it worked I guess? Bleh, I'll just go meditate now. No use in getting angry.

wccrawford 9y ago

>"They treated us as a joke. It's really bad, they think 'oh, he's a 19-year-old kid who knows nothing," he said of the market regulator. I would hope that the market regulator treats everyone as if they know nothing, and forces them to prove things. Not just this guy.

alexasmyths 9y ago

Poster Child for the Era.

Xeoncross 9y ago

> This week he began accepting investor funds, hoping to raise $220 million Do we have any proof that Ashutoush has actually raised anything?

georgedotsmith 9y ago
Their ICO website, which is currently down, had claimed that they had raised $1 million in the first 6 hours of the eCash token sale.

wyqydsyq 9y ago

The saying "Fake it 'till you make it" really comes to mind here. The kid is hoping he can lie and scheme his way to success. Sorry bud but that doesn't work with startups, maybe if you were already an executive at a multinational corporation where you have little accountability and any blame can fall onto the company, but if you lie as a startup founder your reputation and that of all your future ventures will be ruined.

georgedotsmith 9y ago

An update to this saga, "Teen's under-fire cryptocurrency offer withdrawn" http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11948672 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&o...

spondyl 9y ago
Ah, thanks for the update! I figured as much, since the ICO site had been down all weekend, but at least this trainwreck has been halted for now.