Maybe 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.
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?
$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.
Oh 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?
I am not a VC, but I would think that having a "CMO" would be a disaster for fundraising and a solid "Marketing professional" would bad, but not as bad as having someone with a big title.
Marketing without product market fit is a huge red flag imo.
GP's point extends well south of San Francisco. I've lived in the Peninsula/South Bay for a few years and it's pretty much the same down here as it is in SF. Unfortunately for me a commute from the East Bay is out of the question, but I certainly wouldn't mind having that rent!
Yeah, its so terrible here. I live in the hills overlooking the entire city of SF. I have a view of the bay bridge, the golden gate bridge, angel island and alcatraz from my backyard.
There is zero crime since I live in the hills. There are nice restaurants and nice people.
So yeah, please continue thinking that this place is uninhabitable and stay in SF. :)
Funny how people said the same thing about the Mission 10 years ago, or Oakland 5 years ago.
As 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.
I 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."
Having 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.
This 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.
I'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.
>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.
Good 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.
This 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.
Honestly, 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.
>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.
Indeed (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.
Really? 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.
>You've never seen people permanently harmed by bad things written about them online?
What about all those people who get away with being assholes who we don't realize are assholes because they're so successful? What about the good people fucked over by bad luck who we never hear about?
Basically your comment just reinforces what I was saying. You're using the situations you're aware of to explain the way the world works in a way that makes you happy.
Amen. "Name and shame" only works to some extent (re: Jacon Appelbaum) but if the person isn't that prominent, or the story doesn't get traction, then the normal human tendency to try and put it all behind oneself is a factor (along with not wanting to deal with "victim blaming") Then the story eventually turns into just gossip and is left in the past...
Due diligence is a good idea, but for the first asshole I dealt with, there were stories, but the person who introduced me to him didn't tell me because of "ethical concerns". Even though he knew the stories were true and that this guy was problematic. He is also very secretive, so any due diligence I might have done probably wouldn't have turned up much (i.e. any lawsuits would have been hard to uncover). I picked up clues though and didn't put together a full picture of this guy's character till it was too late because I was too focused on the work. My take on the whole thing was everyone in the past that had been ripped off by this guy chalked it up to "life" and so nothing ever stuck to him well enough. Typical shady businessman...
As for the second full blown psychopath I've dealt with... he had a reputation, I thought it was all more gossip / sour grapes, and I didn't look hard enough because I trusted the people who were giving him a pass (though my intuition was complaining). Never again. We all got screwed over and I had to spend £4k to defend myself against this idiot's bogus threats of lawsuits (my fault for being manipulated...)
So if I ever do business with anyone else again, the only answer is A) trust no one and B) be a psychopath for defensive purposes. Capitalism these days practically demands that you think like a psychopath because the majority of people you deal with are going to do the same. That goes for management as well - employers are not your friends. They merely may be idiots, but you are only a resource to be exploited by them.
The conclusion of all this stress over the past 7 years is that character truly does matter, in all areas of life and to focus on that first off when evaluating a person.
I once caught someone lying on a resume, but only because they mentioned a former employer that was also my former employer and while they worked there, they didn't work on the project they claimed (which I had worked on, it was a small team, and which happened before they got hired there.)
But that was a lucky catch in a relatively small town.
How did you decide not to move forward with a candidate? Are you sure you didn't make a decision based on uncorroborated data? (EG: One can say whatever one wants about someone online, and when you google their name it may come up, even though the source has an axe to grind.)
When 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.
Richmond 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?
Please 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.
Well 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.
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
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?