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I worked in an office next to an Uber clone that was clearly unsuccessful. Yet they had a significant Series A from a Russian oligarch, then got bought a few ye
by seibelj 4y ago
I worked in an office next to an Uber clone that was clearly unsuccessful. Yet they had a significant Series A from a Russian oligarch, then got bought a few years later at something like 10x the Series A funding amount by a different Russian oligarch. There was a press release and a news story about how wonderful this was.
This scheme was so clearly a laundering play, but everyone pretended it was some amazing exit. I'm confident the tech industry is full of these shenanigans, but I've never seen anything like this uncovered.
- ggm 4y agoIf they can offload on the market, this might be net lossless or lower loss at scale than other methods. I guess taking net company worth into a bank in Cyprus or something and using it as security to buy land, boats, whatever achieves the real outcome. Even if only some 1/nth can be collateralised