Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

https://medium.com/@PennyKim/i-got-scammed-by-a-silicon-valley-startup-574ced8acdff#.hkgnuhiny

by davidkhess • 10 years ago

1311 449 10 years ago

cyberferret2• 10 years ago

Clicked on this expecting to see another millennial self entitled "why I left" rant, but found a well written, horrifying article on deception and underhanded shenanigans.

The CEO of this startup qualifies be listed under the other discussion on here about psychopaths running companies.

sanderjd2• 10 years ago

Odd, I've never come across a rant like that. But I do seem to see self satisfied "millennial" bashing pretty often. (I don't think I'll ever understand this impulse to ascribe vague personality traits to broad groups of people across a large number of birth years.)

cyberferret2• 10 years ago

Apologies, it was probably a little too judgemental and unnecessarily tarred a lot of people with a wide brush, but there was a phase about 12 months ago where Medium was full of posts, to paraphrase what someone else said: "By unknown twenty-something year olds posting angst driven articles about leaving some unknown valley startup as if they were Jimmy Page leaving Led Zeppelin"...

bendbro• 10 years ago

I'd imagine it has something to do with having eyes, ears and a brain

pcwalton2• 10 years ago

well written, horrifying article on deception and underhanded shenanigans

In this case, the phrase "criminal acts" seems more appropriate.

gozur88• 10 years ago

If I'm understanding the article correctly this goes beyond not getting paid because the CEO is juggling accounts - the Wells Fargo thing is probably criminal.

dragonwriter11• 10 years ago

The "not getting paid on time" thing is, by itself, criminal in California.

See California Labor Code Secs. 204 & 215.

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xh....

derek1800• 10 years ago

How common is this behavior at startups in Silicon Valley? Can anyone share similar stories or point me at other posts?

rco8786• 10 years ago

As with any geography/industry, there are some people with questionable morals. It's nothing unique to SV or startups.

_pmf_2• 10 years ago

It's nothing unique to SV or startups.

In most European countries, not paying your employees in the course of delaying bankruptcy on purpose will be a jail term. I was under the impression that California (as opposed to the rest of the US of A) had pretty strict workforce protection laws, too.

tbrooks• 10 years ago

What's the real identity of the startup?

krustchinsky• 10 years ago

Looks like it's Job Sonic. If you look at the CEO, the information checks out.

sleazebreeze• 10 years ago

Job Sonic -> 1for.one -> WrkRiot

Each name worse than the last...

jimmywanger4• 10 years ago

"Sunshine is the best disinfectant."

This might be counterproductive in some instances, but if something doesn't smell right, I'll try to blow it up and make all the dealings very public.

I mean, there are no personal feelings involved. You are paying me to be a worker. No pay? No work.

jtfairbank5• 10 years ago

Usually not a good idea. This opens you up to: defamation lawsuits, contract violations, and provides cause for firing which could hurt your own claims.

Scumbag Startup: "We fired Screwed Employee for cause."

Screwed Employee: "No you didn't! It was retaliation."

Scumbag Startup: "Sure we did. Look at what he/she posted publicly after leaving the company. Screwed Employee behaved similarly around the office and was negatively impacting the work environment."

jimmywanger4• 10 years ago

Ah, you misunderstood.

When I said blow things up and make things public, I meant make all my communications with management and the company very out in the open, CC everybody.

That way, if they do fire you for cause, you have a paper trail, and you tend to keep a lid on their worst tendencies because then they have to justify their words/actions to their own employees.

No, you never escalate publicly, not to people outside the company. As long as everybody is CCed while the conversation is going on, they don't have a leg to stand on, since everything is factual.

walshemj2• 10 years ago

Actualy if they don't pay you the employer has frustrated the contract its a slam dunk in court.

lemonghost3• 10 years ago

https://www.linkedin.com/company/jobsonic ?

mgkimsal2• 10 years ago

jobsonic.com = expired squarespace site...

lemonghost3• 10 years ago

On crunchbase they are now wrkriot: http://www.wrkriot.com/team-1/

hackaflocka5• 10 years ago

wrkriot.com is a current squarespace site.

bvanslyke• 10 years ago

Yep. Looks like it's now called "1for.one". Their CEO has a stock photo on LinkedIn and owned a mining corp.

lemonghost3• 10 years ago

I think 1for.one is the old name, then they changed it to jobsonic and, more recently, to wrkriot.com.

patwalls• 10 years ago

And analyst at JP Morgan...

pluma3• 10 years ago

*WrkRiot. 1forOne's twitter and facebook profiles are gone and WrkRiot matches the description perfectly (including the doggy avatar and a large number of Asian employees).

It's actually dangerously obvious who some of the people mentioned in the story are, just from the descriptions. It might be a good idea to anonymize characters further by changing ethnicity/nationality and gender.

funkyy• 10 years ago

The website doesn't look like anything that would come out from a team of developers/designer. It looks like one man side project really...

0xmohit3• 10 years ago

Amusingly the `whois` records for wrkroit.com mention 1FOR.ONE CORPORATION as the registrant organization. Here is a snippet of the records:

  Domain Name: WRKRIOT.COM
  Creation Date: 25-aug-2016
  Registrant Name: ISAAC CHOI
  Registrant Organization: 1FOR.ONE CORPORATION
  Registrant Street: 2005 DE LA CRUZ BLVD
  Registrant Street: SUITE 131
  Registrant City: SANTA CLARA
  Registrant State/Province: CA
  Registrant Postal Code: 95050
  Registrant Country: US
  Registrant Phone: +1.4083447484
  Registrant Email: MYSUBS@HALLFORONE.COM

MichaelBurge2• 10 years ago

Isn't the photoshopped wire transfer literally outright criminal fraud? The government should move fast and break him.

spriggan3• 10 years ago

Isn't the photoshopped wire transfer literally outright criminal fraud? The government should move fast and break him.

Definitely fraudulent.

dragonwriter11• 10 years ago

Isn't the photoshopped wire transfer literally outright criminal fraud?

Its not clear to me that it is criminal fraud; its clearly deceptive, and its clearly intended to defuse expected responses to the already-criminal failure to pay regular payroll, but I'm not sure its an independent crime.

But, you know, there are people who taxpayers pay to investigate the kind of thing described in this article (like the local DA and the California Department of Industrial Relations) and I'd defer to them on exactly which bits of this affair are which crimes.

GuiA4• 10 years ago

Welcome to the club. It's pretty much a rite of passage here to spend some time with a psychopath VC, a completely self absorbed CTO with a rich investor dad that fuels his fantasies, or an idiotic CEO with an ego problem, and to pay the price for it (just time if you're lucky, time+money if you're not).

I've encountered this myself several times (down to the CEO using hire fast fire fast as a mantra), and judging from my friends' stories, most people have or will. When there are large amounts of money at stake, I guess it makes sense for charlatans and sharks to flock.

There are very few ways to tell accurately from the outset at first who's going to screw you over - I've heard horror stories of the sort from friends at startups backed by high profile entities like YC, famous startups that are often in the media for being "the best places to work at", companies with celebrity founders who have reputations for being "the nicest guys in the world", etc.

It's the kind of thing that you can only learn through a few painful experiences, I think. You do learn your lessons: never pay in advance for anything, don't put your own savings or core livelihood on the line for someone else's dreams, get everything in writing, talk to former employees of a company/colleagues of a founder before getting involved, never ever assume that what you have is anything more than an employer/employee relationship, etc.

I have to say that I'm impressed by how the poster handled it - keeping documentation, filing wage claims, etc. - the only thing she could have done better was not staying on so long when she wasn't getting paid, but it's an understandable mistake when you're in the moment.

I for one am glad I learned my lessons at 22 rather than at 45 with a family to care for and a mortgage to pay. The upside is that there are plenty of genuinely nice, passionate people - when you find them, stay close to them.

ef42• 10 years ago

It's pretty much a rite of passage here... most people have or will

That's pretty silly. Plenty of people working in startups never put themselves through that kind of BS.

There are at last two obvious strategies for avoiding the whole problem: (1) be a founder, (2) work in a more established tech company until you have the experience, personal network, and finances to intelligent pick a startup to work for.

GuiA4• 10 years ago

Can confirm, did 1) and ended up with a deluded CEO cofounder, now in 2) and feeling much better.

20yrs_no_equity4• 10 years ago

This is good advice, but I think everyone is best suited to doing number 2 before number 1. Most people are not ready to be a founder right out of the gate, and that's where a lot of the douchebag founder horror stories come from. Not because they want to be douchebags, just because they are so arrogant.

One should spend five years building stuff before becoming a CEO.

erikb6• 10 years ago

You think as founder you don't have to deal with that? Oh boy, you're in for quite a few surprises. And how do you learn about how to handle this if you work at more established companies?

It's the kind of thing we all already know of because of tv shows like game of thrones. But experiencing and actually handling it is another topic.

hobs• 10 years ago

Often the worst companies put pressure on their employees to give fake positive surveys and pretend their company is a great place to work to trick people into a year or two while management moves on.

Seen it happen at a company that was voted top xx best places to work for a few years running in the local press.

20yrs_no_equity4• 10 years ago

I've seen HR at a major abuser massage Glassdoor rankings by disputing/threatening them with legal action for negative reviews and shilling/creating fake accounts to put in positive reviews. I believe Glassdoors policy is that they are not interested in lawsuits, so all it takes is a letter from a lawyer. Maybe even less than that.

choiwisely• 10 years ago

There are very few ways to tell accurately from the outset at first who's going to screw you over

Pay close attention to how they treat others.

einhverfr3• 10 years ago

Totally second this.

Particularly look at:

1 How they treat their customers

2 How they treat their affiliates

3 How they encourage their affiliates to treat their customers.

jtfairbank5• 10 years ago

Agreed. Startups are incredibly hard, and this can bring out the best in people... or the worst.

Just like you, I'm early on in my career. I appreciate the incredibly valuable and lifelong lessons that I've learned from them. I feel that in the long run I'll be better off for them since I know exactly what to look for to identify bad situations before I'm in them, and how to protect myself if I do end up in one.

Most importantly, I've learned what not to do to other people and find that I've developed stronger ethics as a result.

harwoodleon3• 10 years ago

Biggest mistake is thinking you have to "get" experience.

I'm 42 and at the other end of the scale. To me the line now that "it's a good learning experience" and "I'll know better in the future" are just ways of saying "I'm making mistakes".

From someone who has been there and done that, best not to make the mistakes in the first place. I had strong ethics to begin with and compromised them many times because I thought that's what you had to do to get on. I was wrong.

Learn from listening to experience and watching others fail or succeed, much smarter.

You can never have enough advice before making decisions. Find successful people you trust and listen to them.

Much easier than having to go through your own hassles.

You'll be happier.

GuiA4• 10 years ago

Outside of the edit window for my comment, but wanted to add: the H1B situation sounds fishy as hell. 8 H1Bs costs a lot of money, which the company does not seem to abound with.

It seems like something weird might be going on here - if the founders are willing to forge receipts and lie about the company, it might not be beyond them to hold on to passports or some such for "immigration reasons", which would then explained the unwavering loyalty. If something like that is going on, I hope the devs get out of it unburned.

wrong_variable• 10 years ago

(speaking from a very informed position on this)

The biggest indicator I have seen when it comes to H1B1 is if the company is run by recent foreign immigrants.

I have seen 5 man team able to get hold of H1B1 - since they were that dedicated.

The process is not actually that hard if there is a will from the top for it.

pjc50• 10 years ago

The easiest solution is that they've simply lied to the 'H1Bs' and immigration officials as well - brought them in on tourist visas or some other arrangement.

NhanH2• 10 years ago

I want to add that with the H1b lottery being around 20-30% for the past couple of years, being able to hire 8 H1Bs mean that they applied for ~30-40 people. I definitely would lean toward the other comments here that the situation is extremely phony

ones_and_zeros• 10 years ago

H1Bs aren't that much money, especially if it is a transfer [0]. You will of course need legal help but since H1B has become so popular that process has been streamlined and attorneys now use it as a loss leader in order to expand their business.

The other aspect, is that yes it'll be about $4k to transfer an H1B all in, but... consider the savings. A Level 1 "Computer Programmer" in Santa Clara has a minimum wage of $52k[1]. I'm not too familiar with Santa Clara but that is probably a 50% savings over a typical software engineer wage. Paying $30k for 8 H1B transfers all in looks really attractive when payroll is shrunk by $300k+...

EDIT: looking at some of their linkedin profiles they fit the profile of an F1 OPT employee (Bachelors from an unknown university in china, masters from a large state university STEM degree mill, recently graduated), which is even better for the employer, you get a built in tax benefit discount on their wage.

[0] https://www.uscis.gov/forms/h-and-l-filing-fees-form-i-129-p...

[1] http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-11...

gcb0• 10 years ago

here how it happens:

a company, that is not really a company, keeps applying for tons of h1b. they usually have some title like consulting.

they get the h1b and don't even bring the programmers from India. they become "visa holders" companies.

the h1b's then start to look for work on their own, or the holder. and once the programmer is hired, the visa holder company gets paid, take 70% (or 60% if the programmer found the position themselves).

and this is how most h1b contractors that work on Google and such live. they will endure it for the 10 years the us forces them to stay as h1b. always trying to get transferred to the hiring company directly, and almost always failing.

the final company pays much more for a contractor via a visa holder, but they have the benefit of paying it via a small consulting company, so it won't show up as head count for the investors. everyone but the programmer wins.

zem• 10 years ago

as an H-1B myself, you don't need to hold on to passports to buy that sort of "loyalty". moving here from anywhere in asia is a huge sunk cost, and the natural impulse is to hope against hope that you don't have to bite the bullet and go back home, essentially eating that cost and starting over.

plus (at least from an indian perspective) there was a time when the indian job market for programmers was so bad that people would put up with all sorts of abusive conditions, simply because they knew that if they went back home it would be to a long and depressing job search that would likely end up with a low-paying position. (i believe that has gotten better in recent years; i'm not sure what the situation in china is)

Theodores• 10 years ago

a psychopath VC, a completely self absorbed CTO with a rich investor dad that fuels his fantasies, or an idiotic CEO with an ego problem, and to pay the price for it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_B_personality_disorder...

For some reason we are not educated about this. We learn it the hard way by being taken in with what seems a good opportunity, then getting abused and then going our own way. We naively believe people empathise for others in the mistaken idea that there is some semblance of 'compassion' in everyone.

Even if we have gone through the mill several times we may not be educated as to what is only going on. You have to be done over by someone at the extreme end of the spectrum of personality disorder to understand what really goes on with the tyrants and bullies that frequently own companies, start-up or otherwise. We even elect these 'personality disorder' types to high office without anyone pointing out that they are not fit for the role due to having these psychopath tendencies.

This really does have to be a regulatory issue as those that cannot think through the consequences of their actions or empathise with others or understand the harm they do need to be rendered powerless. Otherwise they will not learn their lesson and go on to waste yet more lives. They can do so near indefinitely, taking people on a ride for six months or more before their victims cotton on to what is happening.

There is a second problem in that the people with these personality disorders really do attract others. Cult leaders do it, to attract others with personality problems of their own, elsewhere on the spectrum. For instance, in this case, marketing. What type of person does marketing in the first place? What leads them to believe they have the secret sauce to market the product they know nothing about? There is some self-belief going on there, some belief that isn't grounded in a strong product that the customer-base will 'market' using word-of-mouth. Sure there may be some good experience and education that can be brought to the problem but often there is not.

It is important to learn the 'tells' - as other commentators have noted it is how people treat restaurant staff that says it all with these rogues. Also the 'there is no I in team' really does matter - do they say 'we' or 'I'? Sometimes we overlook these 'tells' for reasons we invent - maybe they have were brought up that way... We give them excuses for their behaviour. We keep our anger at them to ourselves and don't burn our own bridges by letting that anger out.

It is a pity that most people only get 'lightly burned' in these situations and not fully toasted. Only when you get fully toasted can you work it out properly and end up knowing about the rogue personality types and how toxic they are.

erikb6• 10 years ago

It's really infuriating how few people will believe you and follow up on the 'tells'. Even people who must have experienced that before. The only reason I can think of for that behavior is an inate hope that other people are reasonable.

xenihn2• 10 years ago

I just got out of a relationship with someone who is borderline. It makes me really, really sad that borderline personality disorder is even a thing :(

darkenedgy• 10 years ago

witch hunt much?

obviously, there are personality traits and disorders which predispose a person to doing bad things. But that isn't a reason to assume that's what happened here, unless you happen to be that person's licensed psychiatrist.

It doesn't take a mental disorder to be shitty.

melindajb2• 10 years ago

and yet silicon valley says it's impossible that discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race, and age isn't happening. Not you, per se, just in general everyone believes the scam but the rest is "just a matter of opinion."

As for me I am entirely unsurprised because I've literally seen it all. and it happens more often than most people realize. the more desperate you are to be here, the more people will take advantage of you.

It's very similar to the way young girls who want to be actresses or models get "discovered" by pornographers.

taneq• 10 years ago

Wow, that whole tale of woe is giving me flashbacks to a startup game studio I worked at once upon a time. They never resorted to outright fraud in the 'lets not pay them, but say we did' sense but there was plenty of the other sketchy behaviour.

chejazi• 10 years ago

Crunchbase company profile, as determined from the comments on HN: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/1for-one

xiphias• 10 years ago

Investor $1M Isaac Choi

Where's the 4M here that the OP was writing about? She could have checked crunchbase to see that the startup doesn't have money.

rantrix• 10 years ago

Anyone with an account on crunchbase can contribute any information about a company. The information is not official. It is crowd-sourced. Which means the info can be fake.

hackaflocka5• 10 years ago

Is Crunchbase a 100% reliable source? How do they do their due diligence?

dboreham3• 10 years ago

Interesting, because I saw a very similar scenario play out at the very first job I had after college. A coworker's paycheck was delayed then when the check did arrive it bounced. Coworker complained to CEO. Coworker was then fired. As a sibling comment says: this kind of thing happens often enough that everyone has seen it at least once.

Definite bonus points for the fake wire transfer receipts though. Above and beyond!

mrhektor• 10 years ago

Singaporean startup founder here who moved from the US. I have yet to meet a psychopathic CEO here in Singapore, but I've met and heard about quite a few in Silicon Valley / Bay Area. It may just be selection bias (a lot more companies are founded in the Bay Area) but I wonder if there's something more. Any other insights into Bay Area startups vs. international startups here?

auganov• 10 years ago

I've had the [dis]pleasure of having an even more fraudulent co-founder in China. Heard plenty of stories too. Perhaps stories from SV are just more likely to get exposed to the public (and get attention).

mavelikara• 10 years ago

Offtopic, but since you mentioned Singapore: https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/30/crunchpad-end/

jmartens2• 10 years ago

I had a Singaporean (from Inida) "investor" sign docs only to stall, lie, and eventually fake wire transfers (also from wells fargo, which is ironic in this article). Tried to forget the guy, but think he first name was Sumanth. Be careful if anyone comes across this fraud!

swang• 10 years ago

okay i can understand why the title got changed. but why to what it is currently? feels like a "missed the lede" kinda title which isn't any better than the original title.

BradRuderman• 10 years ago

The biggest red flag for me is when no one at the company (even the founders) have experienced the problem their product is solving!

loeg• 10 years ago

There's a huge difference between starting a company that will fail on (lack of) merits, and being unethical to your employees. Huge.

35bge57dtjku• 10 years ago

Is it a bad sign that all SW engineers were on H1B visas? Why wouldn't they hire any from the US?

liulu• 10 years ago

For control. A US employee can walk away from the sinking ship any time without too much repercussions, not the case for foreign nationals staying on company sponsored visas

_pmf_2• 10 years ago

A US employee can walk away from the sinking ship any time without too much repercussions, not the case for foreign nationals staying on company sponsored visas

The Qatar school of management.

wazu• 10 years ago

What could have they done in this situation?

SakiWatanabe• 10 years ago

Michael said under his breath in our second language, “Look at those Chinese kids. They’re pretty happy they got paid, huh?”

Kim (the writer) is a korean last name, is the company CEO korean too?

gfaure• 10 years ago

He's been identified elsewhere in the thread through the company's new name, so I would assume so.

hackaflocka5• 10 years ago

Depending on if Choi is a Korean last name.

khuey• 10 years ago

Choi is a common Korean surname (4th or 5th most common, IIRC).

kijin• 10 years ago

If the company and employees identified by other people in this thread are correct, then yes, it would seem that this company has a Korean CEO who enjoys the loyalty of a Korean clique within the company. Some of the Caucasian employees have close ties to Korea as well. OP was ostracized and eventually kicked out because she didn't go along with the clique despite sharing their ethnicity.

The H1B's are Chinese and probably have no influence over how the Korean clique runs their company. The quote from "Michael" suggests that he has little more than contempt for the "Chinese kids". I can almost hear the Korean version of that remark in my head, and unfortunately this kind of racism is all too common among the assholes who give my country a bad rep.

toomanybeersies2• 10 years ago

Yep, it would appear that their current Marketing Manager "Jessica" spent a stint working in ROK for a startup.

chenster2• 10 years ago

Choi, Park, Kim are all common Korean last name. Some Chinese also has Choi last name.

mkoryak• 10 years ago

I once worked for a startup here in boston that didn't pay me for a few months until I threatened to file a wage claim (did't work) and to quit (worked). I got the hell out of there as soon I got paid - some of my coworkers weren't so lucky.

It seems crazy to me now that I wound up in such a situation, but what it is happening to you, it is usually accompanied by a healthy helping of lies, misinformation and hope.

It wont happen again. But it was fun getting ~3 months salary in cash and going to Jordan's to buy furniture with my girlfriend like a gangsta'

semi-extrinsic• 10 years ago

But it was fun getting ~3 months salary in cash and going to Jordan's to buy furniture with my girlfriend like a gangsta'

Fo' shizzle, if I'm ever gonna buy a nailgun, it's gonna be paid in cash.

https://youtu.be/JDpvkwBBu6U

h4nkoslo2• 10 years ago

Has there ever been an instance of late payroll (as opposed to eg sales commission checks being calculated wrong) where the company actually pulled out of the nosedive? It seems like it's almost always the death knell.

trcollinson3• 10 years ago

Absolutely yes, though it depends on the transparency of the rest of the team really. I have been involved with three companies in my career which pulled out of this seeming nosedive. One of the companies was going through a really horrible time. They had just got done releasing software that was horribly behind schedule which relieved their customers, but it was still stressful. They were working on settling two law suits. And it was almost Christmas time (first pay check of December, I remember it well). The owner came in and said he couldn't make payroll and that he would be able to as soon as a few customers paid. Everyone was upset. Later that afternoon the CEO's daughter rolled up in a brand new Subaru which he had bought for her over the weekend. I was the head of development, my buddy was the head of operations. We walked the CEO outside and broke the news to his daughter and him that the car was going back. We took the cash and made payroll. We never allowed the CEO to make financial decisions again and about 10 months later closed the sale of the entire business for a windfall profit for him and us. Ultimately everyone got paid well and everything worked out.

The second place, the C level executives literally didn't know how to calculate runway and more or less ignored the bank accounts. Checks started to bounce from the bank accounts two days before the payroll was to be cashed. The executives freaked out and honestly felt horrible. Payroll bounced but we warned all of the employees. I was again development manager and the CEO asked me if I knew anyone who could help. We brought in a friend of mine who is a consulting turn around expert. We got one of the existing investors to make payroll, three days late, by signing a personal check. My friend, the turn around expert, wrangled the books (after not sleeping for numerous days to try to figure out the financial situation). We turned the company around, and in a few months had it to a level of profitability it had never seen before.

It is possible to turn things around. Really the biggest problems come when people aren't honest with themselves and their employees about the situation they are in. The first CEO in my example had to be honest with himself and realize he had to spend on his employees before he could spend on his family. When he relinquished control of the financial decisions and stuck to what he was good at, the company turned around quickly. The second executive team had to realize that they were young and inexperienced and needed help. When they did and asked for it, the company turned around quickly.

h4nkoslo2• 10 years ago

Not trying to pick over semantics, but in both of those cases, payroll was in fact met almost immediately, just via "extraordinary measures". Going a full pay period without a paycheck should be the signal to stop showing up and start seizing assets.

triplesec4• 10 years ago

These are great stories, thank you! What about the third company..?

jwdunne• 10 years ago

That's an incredible set of stories. What strikes me is the ability and confidence to take the CEO aside and say no, that's not happening. That sounds pretty nerve racking.

The things that stick out to me here are how excellent teams took the mantle and provided radical turn arounds from a trajectory pointing to failure.

Honestly made my day.

cperciva3• 10 years ago

I remember reading a couple years ago about a company where the CEO came in and announced that they weren't going to be able to make payroll so he was going to have to lay everybody off; some of the employees left, but others stuck around working "for free", and the company turned around within a few months. A couple years later they exited and the CEO gave large gifts to the employees who stuck around because they didn't own any stock but he knew that the company would have failed if they had left when he couldn't make payroll.

But that was a case of a CEO who was honest with the employees about the state of the company; I don't know of any cases where a company succeeded after a CEO lied about failing to make payroll.

jsprogrammer3• 10 years ago

An honest CEO would have awarded stock in lieu of pay.

phonon• 10 years ago

http://blogs.findlaw.com/in_house/2015/04/not-my-jam-pandora...

"According to Business Insider, Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren admitted at a San Francisco startup conference that, between 2002 and 2004, it didn't pay its 50 employees at all. "

zappo2938• 10 years ago

If all correspondence is done on the phone and not through email. I communicate through writing much better than on the phone so I wrote long and explicit emails. I don't feel like I have anything to hide. The phone only people are the ones who go back on their word.

The other thing is one size fits all NDA / non compete contract. Maybe it makes sense for the sales people but for writing code every day inventing things it doesn't make sense for the employee. If people don't want to take the time to write an appropriate NDA / non compete contract I have no time for them.

uiri• 10 years ago

I think the title should be changed back. The author glosses over the single, real biggest red flag:

She never received any paystubs and the company was late on payroll as of before she was hired

I have never, ever been paid without either a paystub (as an employee) or generating an invoice which the business then paid (as a freelancer). The outright refusal to share how they arrived at the figure on her cashier's cheque should have sent her looking for a new job in the Bay Area or back to Texas.

The real lesson from this story is to always have a backup plan when making a big move: what do you do if you arrive and there is no job/no money? what do you do if you arrive and there is no apartment/room/house/etc.? Scammers exist and there is only so much you can do from a distance to avoid them.

themartorana• 10 years ago

Also this really isn't a Buzzfeed list - it's a rather personal story, with a little fraud sprinkled in for funsies.

jomamaxx8• 10 years ago

This is not a huge flag. When a company starts up, it's difficult for them to get the money operating as per regular.

He got paid - that's what matters.

The paystub is a minor thing/

einhverfr3• 10 years ago

Pay people in regular ways through regular channels.

Seriously, though, ADP delivers paystubs. If they were using ADP, they would have gotten paystubs.

Lalabadie• 10 years ago

Startup or not, you don't offload the risks of making payroll onto your employees.

snowwrestler2• 10 years ago

If a company can't produce a paystub with a paycheck, I doubt that they are handling accounting and taxes properly.

Paystubs don't need to come from ADP. They can be typed up or even hand-written if you want. But they demonstrate, and record, that the company is fulfilling its legal obligations as an employer, and give the employee the information the employee needs to fulfill their legal obligations as a taxpayer.

st3v3r11• 10 years ago

No, this is huge. Paystubs are a major thing. And if you can't get the money operating, then you shouldn't be hiring people. And if you are, you should be up front about it.

You are NOT entitled to people working for you for free, under deceptive pretenses.

thatthatis• 10 years ago

It takes about 8 minutes to setup gusto to create w2 pay stubs at a cost of $25/mo +$4/employee.

If you're in "this may fail at any time" mode you can pay people 1099 as contractors.

going from w2 with pay stubs to no pay stubs means they're out of money and saving as much as they can be not paying payroll tax.

CIPHERSTONE2• 10 years ago

That's not what matters. What matters is that the information is correctly documented. Taxes man. They make a difference. Say I make $100 a day before taxes. I get a check that shows they took out $25 for federal, $5 for State, etc. Whoopie, my take home is $70. At the end of the year I get a W-2 showing all the taxes they company took out etc..

But what if they just give me a hand written check for $70 made out to me, Joe Blow. There is no indication of taxes being taken out, but hey, I got $70, so all is great right? Wrong..

At the end of the year I get a W-9. They say I wasn't an employee but a contractor. I have no proof that they took out taxes and now suddenly I am on the hook to pay taxes to the government that were already taken out by the crappy employer and pocketed.

See the problem now?

CIPHERSTONE2• 10 years ago

I know this to be the biggest red flag from personal experience. Happened to me at a small start up in Illinois of all places 20+ years ago. I was fresh out of college the naive to things, trusted in the owner. Got royally screwed. It was a formative experience that I wouldn't wish on anyone but it taught me a very valuable lesson the result of which is that I have only worked at well established companies since.

maverick_iceman2• 10 years ago

https://www.facebook.com/WrkRiot/?hc_ref=SEARCH&fref=nf

sp527• 10 years ago

This must have been a traumatizing experience but the one thing I would want to add to it based upon my own experience is that things don't get that much better at the unicorns. Having worked for one that's still chugging along, I've seen the fake-it-til-you-make-it paradigm persist well into the 'mature' phase of a company. The industry at large feels like such a house of cards. It's not that value isn't being generated, but rather that it has been so dramatically overvalued.

a_small_island• 10 years ago

I feel bad for the employees. This song will repeat itself many times over. Selfish deluded egomaniac taking advantage of people and their livelihood. Good luck to the rank and file.

liquidise• 10 years ago

I found the bit about the negotiated salary of particular note. I have never included severance in my negotiations, mostly because i have always left my jobs willingly. Is that something more common than i know of? What is a reasonable target to aim for?

planteen2• 10 years ago

I've never heard of it either other than for executives with golden parachutes

brianwawok2• 10 years ago

It can happen anywhere. It's all about how much power you have. Random programmer #134 of a Fortune 500 company? Not so much. Hired to lead a new VR projects? Plausible.

For most developer jobs, you don't need it.. because with the job market, it is very easy to find a new job if one flops. But if you had to make a move cross country? It may be easier to get signoff on severance.

tedmiston4• 10 years ago

It is common for leadership roles even in startups.

timv• 10 years ago

I have never included severance in my negotiations

It really depends on how much leverage you have, and what you're concerns you have with the company.

I knew someone who was hired to head up the regional operations for a business that was based overseas. He was worried that they weren't really committed to the local market, but they assured him that they were, and that this was a long-term position.

So, he negotiated that if they closed down his location in the first 12 months of his employment then he would get a very large severance package. Since they were absolutely committed to the market, they agreed.

Less than 2 months into the role he got to hold them to that severance deal.

pyre8• 10 years ago

In a recent discussion, someone looking into a VP role said he was pushing for 6 months.

Someone else pointed out that some wage laws dictate a specific amount of severance that usually depends on the amount of time that you work there. Most companies go above this though (e.g. the law says 1 week severance per year at the company, but some large companies peg that at 1 month/year instead). If you negotiate for a hard number of 6 months, and you end up working for the company for (e.g.) 10 years, you could be leaving 4 months of severance on the table.

triplesec4• 10 years ago

One would hope that after 10 years they'd been promoted and renegotiated contracts

x0x03• 10 years ago

I think it's more common for positions that would disappear in an acquisition -- think CFO (only one per company), maybe finance, CMO (same deal), etc.

walshemj2• 10 years ago

One of the first things anyone who negacates for a living is you have to negocatie how exit will work.

jmartens2• 10 years ago

Typically executive level hires negotiate severance from the start.

melindajb2• 10 years ago

depends on the level. with Execs you get a double trigger if you're let go after a liquidity event (essentially all your stock vests so you don't get shafted.

Young people rarely if ever have the leverage to negotiate severance, but If you can, I'd say 2 months at a minimum plus 1 month for each year. Chances are that in a small startup the reason you get nothing is that they go out of business. And if you're a marketer, doubly so.

As I always say, engineers get aqui-hired. And marketers get acqui-fired.

desdiv2• 10 years ago

I've dealt with late payroll before and the fear, uncertainty, and stress really sucked. I was even considering offering the company a 50% haircut on the wages that I rightfully earned already just so the stress would go away.

Is there any bank or payroll company that offers a wage escrow service? As in, the company pays X months of wages in advance into a per-employee escrow account that's FDIC insured, and the employee can log in at any time to verify its balance.

pyre8• 10 years ago

When Target declared bankruptcy and pulled out of Canada, they setup a trust (or something) to give all employees 4 months of wages. They all got 4 months of wages, but some stores closed sooner than others, so some people ended up working for 4 months while others ended up basically getting paid to do nothing. You might look into what Target used to set this up.

desdiv2• 10 years ago

Good for them. Sounds like they had to setup a trust:

“Therefore, in what we believe is an unprecedented move, Target Corp. is voluntarily seeking to establish a trust that we will fund with C$70 million. Those funds are designed to provide nearly all Target Canada employees with a minimum of 16 weeks of wages and benefits coverage during the wind-down period.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/27/target-canada-severa...

triplesec4• 10 years ago

Great brand management and value culture by Target there. They are fortunate to have deep pockets to be able to do this, of course

kondro• 10 years ago

I think it would surprise you to know the number of companies that lack the cashflow to be able to do this.

toomanybeersies2• 10 years ago

A lot of companies would really struggle to put more than one or two pay cycles of pay in escrow.

I'd imagine less so for tech startups, since in their early life most of their money comes in big chunks of funding, but for a lot of smaller businesses that are self profitable (restaurants come to mind), they can't afford to keep wages in escrow, because that's money they'd have to borrow.

gaius2• 10 years ago

The State of California takes a VERY dim view of employers who can't/don't make payroll. There should theoretically be no need for escrow; the prospect of going to jail should give management sufficient incentives. I wonder if this isn't well known tho' from the number of startup stories on here about late/withheld wages.

kingofspain• 10 years ago

It's a good thing you didn't go for the 50% haircut. I did that once many years ago & it backfired horribly. I got around 40% in the end - dragged out over 8 months - and the MD used my 'willingness' to take the haircut as a sign that I knew that I didn't deserve the full amount and hadn't really earned it. He's still merrily scamming away all these years later I hear as well.

pyre8• 10 years ago

I'm curious what the "H1Bs cannot be used to control employees because H1Bs have a process to move to another company" crowd thinks of this situation.

st3v3r11• 10 years ago

They'll say something about being able to leave, but completely ignoring the situation being extremely stressful and scary. Victim blaming and a complete lack of empathy will ensue.

hueving• 10 years ago

"victim blaming" is a loaded term to avoid any examination of the responsibility of the person who got screwed. When a drunk driver rolls their car and breaks both of their own legs, it is their responsibility for driving drunk, yet you don't find many people calling that "victim blaming" or "a lack of empathy".

Anyone who uses that term tends to be appealing to emotion rather than proposing anything of substance.

st3v3r11• 10 years ago

Why was the company not named? Everyone needs to be warned against working with these scumbags, both employees and clients.

I hope the state prosecutes the hell out of them, and the founders are left living under a bridge.

nameless9125• 10 years ago

Witch-hunting. Our legal standard is "innocent until proven guilty", and the author already filed a legal complaint, so the best thing for her to do is tell her story in general terms and let the legal system sort it out. Vigilante justice of any kind (including an internet lynch mob) doesn't help.

st3v3r11• 10 years ago

Legal standard. This isn't a court of law. By your logic, if a friend asked me about working for a place, I shouldn't be able to tell them my experiences, because that would be "vigilante justice."

The company needs to be named and shamed, otherwise they will keep getting away with this trash. People will still sign up to work for them, not knowing what is happening. By putting the name of the company out there, those people can be informed, and make a better decision.

throway29816129• 10 years ago

As a cheapo freelancer born and working in a country that ranks quite low in transparency, trust and justice system ratings, I'm used to getting shafted by people who hire my services, fail to pay, and leave me with no option to turn to for help.

But I've to say I'm shocked something like that happens even in Silicon Valley, and based on other comments here, quite often too. I don't know whether to cry for my fellow shaftees or laugh at them out of cynical schadenfreude. All I can ask is please do something to fix it effectively, because the broken window effect only makes things worse with time.

ryanSrich2• 10 years ago

It's just over saturation. Not everyone can work for a reputable, well paying company. Hopefully with stories like people will become more privy to the talent shortage myth. It's a money grab that allows startups like this to survive. If there really was a talent shortage no one in their right mind would ever work for a shady startup in Silicon Valley where the rent is 3x the national average.

foxylad• 10 years ago

The names have been changed to protect the innocent and guilty.

Assuming the writer is as scrupulously honest as they seem to be, how legally exposed would they be in actually naming names? And assuming they are exposed, are astute commenters who use clues from the article to reveal the company also liable?

It seems to me that it would be a HUGE public good to name the names. Employees and investors absolutely need the right to know about the people doing this; being able to safely expose them would go a long way to stopping such scum.

pyre8• 10 years ago

They might open themselves up to lawsuits. Even if they will win the lawsuits, that's a money/time sink to deal with.

readitmeow7• 10 years ago

Is it still libel or defamation if it's all true?

jtfairbank5• 10 years ago

Instead of getting into specifics, would simply listing them as "someone I would never work with again" suffice? If enough people do this then the specifics don't really matter... the warning sign is clear.

This seems to avoid the defamation issue because it is a personal statement (about yourself / your thoughts) instead of a statement about them. They could still sue you for defamation, but hopefully you could get it thrown out early at a low cost?

dragonwriter11• 10 years ago

Assuming the writer is as scrupulously honest as they seem to be, how legally exposed would they be in actually naming names?

Anyone involved who wanted to claim that the negative portrayals (of which there are plenty) were false and caused economic harm -- both individuals and the company as a company -- could file libel claims for the damages caused. Even if no liability was actually found in the end, the cost of fighting the lawsuits could be significant.

And assuming they are exposed, are astute commenters who use clues from the article to reveal the company also liable?

Its harder to see liability there, though its not impossible that someone could try to make a case.

rhizome• 10 years ago

They would have to specify which statements are libelous.

halestock• 10 years ago

How did a company with 17 employees manage to get 9 H1Bs?

jboggan• 10 years ago

This stood out as well. I'd wager that those 9 Chinese employees might be misled about their legal status.

readitmeow7• 10 years ago

There are work VISA's also for people that have pending H1-B applications which is what I think OP meant. It would also explain why the employees weren't able to leave easily since the H1-B's are pending.

cperciva3• 10 years ago

Wouldn't that get caught at the airport? I mean, when someone arrives and says they have an H1B visa, USCIS does check, right?

Now, given everything else here I wouldn't be surprised if there was fraud involved in getting the H1B visas issued, but that's separate from the question of whether people who think they have H1B visas actually have H1B visas.

8KjRu5VAAeMBIZm4• 10 years ago

I've been burned repeatedly by startups recruiting me for one role which matches my experience/skillset, then after a month or so radically changing the role to one which I'd had no experience with. I get pivoting, I get needing to be flexible, but why would you hire someone skilled in networking operations and four weeks later decide that person need to design/develop your Windows application instead?

I've always been paid, however I now check to see if startups have actually filed the SEC paperwork when they claim to have raised a round, and verify with the investors they claim to have backing from that they've actually invested in the company. One startup I worked for lead the employees to believe we had a solid 18 month runway, when in fact the founders were covering payroll from home equity lines of credit. They didn't actually close the round until a year after most of the initial employees left as payroll became erratic.

Another startup I worked for on the basis of a handshake...never do that. After a year of developing the company's MVP the founder formalized the structure and equity of the company, cutting the four early employees out as co–founders and reducing our equity from 2% to 0.5%. As were were all working on handshakes, none of us had legally committed to working for him, so we all walked away. He lost the MVP since I had the only copy.

The last startup I worked for (and will ever work for), I was recruited by the CEO to come in and build a mixed-discipline technical team in a supporting role. Within a month it became fairly clear that I'd been hired over the objections of pretty much the entire management team, which had I known I wouldn't have taken the role. I was clearly pegged as "a bad hire" which would not have happened had anyone I'd interviewed with spoke up.

Throwaway account…

s3b• 10 years ago

verify with the investors they claim to have backing from that they've actually invested in the company.

I'm curious, how would you go about doing this?

mooreds• 10 years ago

If they are a US company, I'd start with Edgar: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html

For example, you can see the amount of money FullContact raised in 2015 here: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1523064/000152306415...

8KjRu5VAAeMBIZm4• 10 years ago

As mooreds wrote, I'd start with Edgar and the SEC. I'd also check state records (i.e. are they a Delaware C corp? I should be able to pull public information about the filing, same for most states at varying levels of difficulty).

I used to get annoyed at all of the chest-beating press releases about how much money a company had raised until I realized it was a form of external validation. None of the companies which burned me on equity/funding issues wanted to talk publicly about their fundraising rounds, it was always "we're going to a do a press release, it's just not the right time now". If you publicly state "We raise a $2.5MM Series A from the following investors" I can go out and verify that.

Bonus story: a "company" recruited me hard to be their CTO. Some wining and dining. But a lot of handwaving about the business model and where the funding was sourced from. The founders wanted me to bring their "vision" of social e-commerce to market utilising a proprietary algorithm which would be disclosed to me only upon taking the role. When pressed about corporate structure and funding they eventually disclosed that funding was coming in the form of personal checks written to cover bills as they came in, by the domestic partner of one of the founders. No C Corp, not even an LLC. I declined.

8KjRu5VAAeMBIZm4• 10 years ago

Late followup…in addition to Edgar/SEC I'd look at Mattermark, Crunchbase and Angelist. Meant to mention them earlier.

jordache• 10 years ago

why didn't you just use the MVP as leverage? surely he would have given in?

st3v3r11• 10 years ago

What would be the point? Would you want to continue working for someone who would pull that crap? Would you have any kind of confidence in a company run by someone who would pull that crap?

8KjRu5VAAeMBIZm4• 10 years ago

I did, he held fast to his belief that we hadn't contributed enough to be co–founders nor to get the equity stakes he’d promised when he recruited us. He never raised the money he kept claiming to be raising, and never replaced us with a new team. The startup (if you can call it that) died pretty much when the founder decided to screw the rest of us.

harwoodleon3• 10 years ago

Penny, if you do end up reading the comments on here, be sure of a few things:

You have generated more traffic to their site than Jess ever will.

You are not alone in your experiences.

You are obviously a great professional and you will probably do well.

You have shamed the company into probable closure (which is a good thing) as the guy would get worse with more money and bigger teams.

For everyone involved in a startup there are huge risks. Most of the risks are borne by the founders, they get handsomely rewarded if things go well.

But they often don't. I wish the startup community would take heed at this great story and be more honest about the risks, instead of following the hype train.

Macho ego bullshit is to blame for a lot of wasted effort.

But it's really good to hear that you are back with your cat.

novaleaf• 10 years ago

A rant: I hate the "in crowd" subtext that goes on with all these postmortem posts.

People in-the-know know what company and people are being discussed in these posts. Accordingly, "I know privileged information." banter is thrown around.

I wish that, for the sake of those outside the loop (me at least), people either name-names or take the wink-nods to a private message.

This is probably going to be a very unpopular (ie: negative karma) rant, but those of us outside the SV echo-chamber get hit by this all the time.

OJFord2• 10 years ago

    > People in-the-know know what company and people are
    > being discussed in these posts.
    > I wish that, for the sake of those outside the loop (me
    > at least),

Read on to the comments below. You are "in the loop" ;)

harwoodleon3• 10 years ago

Hit by it all the time? Where do you live? Vegas?

If the SV echo chamber extends to Texas, you might be right about the club.

She's just being careful! If she has brought the company down by explaining her position she may get in all sorts of trouble by naming them too.

Lawyers would love to take her down if there's been a lot of money creamed. He'll probably use this HN thread to blame her for his company failure.

iamleppert• 10 years ago

On Isaac Choi's LinkedIn page he also has the following "jobs platform": http://1for.one/

Animats2• 10 years ago

The fake wire transfer receipt is fraud. That's a criminal offense. Have a talk with the local DA. California has a large prison system, with cell space available.

I've never heard of a startup going that far.

hackaflocka5• 10 years ago

I would second talking to the DA. The photoshopped Wells Fargo receipt is just too much.

You'll be doing someone downstream a huge service. Someone these guys would end up scamming otherwise.

threatofrain2• 10 years ago

I fear that they don't even know the real name of their CEO!

acangiano• 10 years ago

It's okay, the DA office would find out for them.

pcwalton2• 10 years ago

Completely agreed. This is beyond "bad startup" and is actually an issue not just for HN but also for the criminal justice system. The tax issues mentioned suggest a history of this kind of behavior.

veidr• 10 years ago

+1 for pursuing the criminal angle, not because it would make it right for you, or be easy, but simply because it's the right thing to do.

That was 17 real crimes committed. Our society is better off when we collectively do our part to make sure that criminals like that face the justice system.

TheActuallyer2• 10 years ago

+1 . Talk to DA. I wonder if there is any lawyer who would do pro bono

brianwawok2• 10 years ago

Pro bono work is usually to take someone with limited money OUT of a bad situation, for example help abused foster kids petition for being placed in a new foster home, or help an illegal immigrant from being deported with their children.. not "punish a CEO committing fraud to people earning 6 figure salaries".

On the other hand, the right government contact (police? employment? ) will be happy to go after the scammer for "free".

mikeryan• 10 years ago

You're confusing Criminal Charges which is what a DA would handle vs. Civil (suing for back pay) which some attorneys will take on a contingency (30% of payout) but not pro-bono.

Pro-Bono is usually for criminal defense for folks who can't afford a lawyer and when public defenders aren't available.

ryanSrich2• 10 years ago

This was by far the biggest red flag. I'd completely forget about the wage claims and wrongful termination suit and pursue this instead.

erikb6• 10 years ago

You can only think in these morally high ways if your rent is paid for by other means. Otherwise the most important thing is getting any money.

snerbles• 10 years ago

Overcrowding is still a problem with California's prisons [0], to the point where inmates are getting dumped into smaller communities through realignment under AB 109 [1].

Hopefully the perps involved will get plenty of hotbunking time, though.

[0] www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_24980457/california-prison-overcrowding-governor-asks-court-more-time

[1] http://patch.com/california/gilroy/bp--ab-109-californias-fe...

JayJee• 10 years ago

-_-

tootie2• 10 years ago

If this guy is actually fighting some sort of tax fraud charge in NY (possibly a cover story, but that's a pretty bad cover story to instill trust) it might be a matter of handing over evidence to the prosecutors who are already working against him.

abecedarius• 10 years ago

I have, in the 90s bubble. Founder went to jail for securities fraud. A friend of mine never got paid for a lot of work.

Animats2• 10 years ago

The article says "That afternoon in the office, Michael emailed each employee a personalized PDF receipt of a Wells Fargo wire transfer ...". The sample shown is for $12,000. The total for all employees is probably over $100,000.

If this happened in Silicon Valley, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's office has jurisdiction. They have a Major Fraud Unit. "The Major Fraud Unit is responsible for prosecuting cases involving serious and complex fraud, also known as White Collar Crime, where the loss exceeds $100,000. The Unit emphasizes theft cases that are accomplished by lying or the breach of a trusted or fiduciary relationship with the victim as opposed to the taking of property covertly, or by force or fear." Any questions?

The Santa Clara DA's office has a staff of over 500 people. This is one of the things they do. White-collar crime prosecutions often start at the DA's office, rather than coming from police agencies. The DA's office has their own investigators. There's also a process for getting restitution from convicted criminals. This routinely "pierces the corporate veil" and means the criminal is ordered to pay up as part of their punishment.

[1] https://www.sccgov.org/sites/da/prosecution/DistrictAttorney...

dragonwriter11• 10 years ago

The fake wire transfer receipt is fraud. That's a criminal offense.

True. Of course, in CA, not having posted paydays or not paying on the posted paydays is also a criminal offense.

California has a large prison system, with cell space available.

Well, given that it only just cleared below the threshold set in the long case over unconstitutional overcrowding, and is still well over 125% of capacity, I don't know that I'd characterize it as having "cell space available".

mugenjin92• 10 years ago

Apparently, the company posted on their facebook that they are taking legal action against OP as: "a disgruntled former employee who has launched a slanderous campaign against WrkRiot and some of its employees via social media". https://www.facebook.com/WrkRiot/

readitmeow7• 10 years ago

They just took down the facebook page

edit: its back up

ilovesbux831• 10 years ago

why would a company ever post anything like that on their FB page?

hackaflocka5• 10 years ago

OP would be doing a service to society by taking it to the DA.

These guys are going to end up seriously scamming some innocent party in the future.

dgbtn2• 10 years ago

What they did is felony forgery under California law.

dgbtn2• 10 years ago

What they did was felony forgery under California law. PENAL CODE SECTION 470-483.5

One felony count (anything over $950) is 16 months minimum. I have no idea what the formula is for multiple counts.

bambax• 10 years ago

Jessica would ignore my best practices recommendations (...) and promote her “gonzo style” writings that were often filled with typos and grammatical errors.
I don’t when or how the money became an issue

Typos happen.

mkagenius• 10 years ago

'filled' with typos and grammatical errors.

icymi

Veen• 10 years ago

So does proofreading.

OJFord2• 10 years ago

Or rather, it should.

nameless9125• 10 years ago

If your marketing material has typos (yes, even including your company twitter account), you don't deserve a second glance from me, and I think many people would feel similarly. On the other hand, this was an off-the-cuff blog post. They're different.

ara24• 10 years ago

well written story.

with all the troubles, I wonder how the founder could just keep going. may be it is as the story says, "default human condition to not give up" but at what cost.

allenu• 10 years ago

I suspect that he's probably convinced himself that they will one day be successful so these smaller missteps will be paid back several times over once they are. If he's been operating that way for a while, inertia must kick in, especially if no one is really calling him out on basic things like payroll. As Feynman once said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."

scottmf• 10 years ago

What's crazy to me is the company didn't expect anyone to take their story public. Not even the woman in marketing.

I hope you guys continue to expose fraudulent startups and CEOs like this. It really is a service to us all.

choonway• 10 years ago

I would have left the company at red flag #6, inability to tell a compelling story.

And I am looking at this from a software developer's point of view.

therealjohn• 10 years ago

Keep it up Penny! I have only worked for one startup ever right after graduation, and when I think back of it, those 2 years were not only too good to be true, but they did happen. There are good leaders out there, keep having faith!

cycomachead• 10 years ago

Gosh this is awful. I'm glad Penny was able to get out when she could, but I can't imagine being in that experience.

And the marketing...if "wrkriot" is really the new site, this is just sad. The latest post on "Goals" is just SMART goals without even mentioning the acronym...wow.

kennell• 10 years ago

How on earth does a shady, newly founded company with a handful of people manage to hire 8(!) H-1B workers from China?

I really feel bad for those workers. Essentially they are obeying coding slaves for the company until they eventually get their green card. They can not risk being fired, they will not ask for a raise, they can not easily switch to another job etc. etc.

A native worker like the author is less likely to put up with this kind of BS for very long.

This is unfair for both the foreign workers and native workers. Cases like this really show that the H-1B system is a total joke.

javienegas3• 10 years ago

Many of JobSonic devs have been foreigner students in the US, that allows them to work after their MSc is finished.

H1B application (lottery this days) is at the beginning of April, H1Bs granted visas won't be effective until October of the same year. Most of the JobSonic devs started in the end of 2015, therefore they are not H1B visa holders, JobSonic 'probably'(I hope) applied for their H1B visa because they have been students in the U.S. they have more chances of winning the H1B lottery. If the won the lottery, their visas won't be valid until October 2016.

There is a quota of 60k H1B per year, and extra 20k for students in U.S. Universities.

Edit: So their H1B application (Oct 2016) depends on JobSonic well being, that's why they are not asking about getting paid, because their H1B visas are not valid yet.

gaius2• 10 years ago

Red Flag 4.5: The high percentage of H1Bs with little experience. This visa is meant to be for people with irreplaceable skills, not cheap labour.

kabdib• 10 years ago

How is it that an "H1B with little experience" is even possible, then?

nameless9125• 10 years ago

Depending on who you ask, varying flavors of immigration fraud.

krinchan• 10 years ago

Legally, all you have to do is post a job offering on some dark corner of the internet for your job that pays a fair market wage. If you can't hire anyone for a specific period, you get to look for an H1-B!

The problem is that "fair market wage" is actually defined legally by congress. That wage for IT related jobs is barely enough to make a proper middle-class living in a metal trailer 2 hours outside of Las Vegas, much less San Francisco, New York City, or even Atlanta.

So you basically base your office in a city where the COL is high, require your employee to live in said city, and post job listings with a wage no US Citizen who lives in that city would take. If you get anyone actually desperate enough, you invent some magical reason they don't qualify. Not enough experience (10 years for a tech that's been out 2), didn't have experience with JMS (1 out of the 2,000 tech keywords on your listing and honestly if you can write a java application you can read a JMS queue, it's 10 minutes of google), or any of the other reasons you can invent to not hire someone. It's the exact same strategy deployed to not hire someone based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or ethnicity.

Then, you get your cheap H1-B worker who can't leave your company or even change their job title or they get deported.

javienegas3• 10 years ago

H1B is for qualified workers in specialty occupations, the requirements are a 4 years degree, if less, 3 years of experience counts as 1 year of university studies.

partycoder• 10 years ago

Glassdoor can be a proper place to leave warnings to potential candidates.

aioprisan• 10 years ago

Sunshine is the best medicine https://twitter.com/WrkRiot/status/767449617071878144

jsumrall• 10 years ago

Someone from that area might want to contact the local DA's office: http://sfdistrictattorney.org/contact-us

restlessdesign• 10 years ago

Red flag #…well…whatever: noindex tags on the company’s homepage. Though maybe that’s included in that Chinese company’s “Scrub the CEO’s name and profile photos from the Internet” package.

wingworks• 10 years ago

I would never work for a company where the CEO's name and pictures aren't public. They're the face of the company, I'm not sure how he expects the company to become big if he's hiding all the time...

d0100• 10 years ago

"About a month in, our interim leader returned to Korea, and a woman was brought in who had worked at several video game companies. She used to know our CEO’s in college. She was kind, thoughtful, and attentive. I knew the company would eat her alive.

After our boss departed, I took over a few of his duties. One of them was “viral marketer.” I was now creating ad campaigns on Facebook in an attempt to bring monthly active users to the site.

I had no training. I was acting on one hunch and instinct after another. Yet, I was good.

A month or two passed without incident, and then we lost a team member. Unable to withstand the workload and the move, she left to be with her boyfriend. We all made fun of her for it."

Seems like the "other side of the story" from Tess. Doesn't make her look any better...

http://theunderemployedlife.com/working-start-almost-killed-...

mgkimsal2• 10 years ago

Wow... good find!

"A real start up company is populated by a shark tank full of thieves, corrupt business people, unscrupulous investors, and fickle employees" WTF? So you're not a 'real start up' unless you've got a bunch of corrupt criminals running the show?

PedroBatista• 10 years ago

That must be a typo, I'm sure she meant "Jail"

dec0dedab0de• 10 years ago

that was about another company, and in the last few minutes the site turned into some kind of scam. I guess someone is actively monitoring this thread.

pascalmemories2• 10 years ago

CAREFUL! That link has a boobytrapped payload that roots Android devices and installs malware (latest Android 6.0 device). Probably a dodgy ad network injecting it.

Best visit with noscript enabled.

TechieKid3• 10 years ago

Well, what if we already opened the link on a 6.0 Android device? Can I check in some manner whether it's infected or do I just have to treat it as untrustworthy and trash it?

jackgolding• 10 years ago

great find, thank you!

1024core• 10 years ago

I don't know. The very next sentence is:

We worked through Christmas, and were given no time off for the holidays. Our boss, being a kind soul, offered us New Year’s Eve as a consolation.

AFAICT, Christmas hasn't come yet.

clapinton• 10 years ago

Thought so too, but the timelines don't match, since she mentions stuff about Xmas. Still, my jaw dropped a few more cm after reading those sentences, and believe me, it was already on the floor after reading the medium piece.

gotrecruit6• 10 years ago

i'm seriously laughing my ass off literally right now... this chick just keeps finding herself scammed by startups time after time, it's kind of hilarious and sad at the same time, especially because it seems like she's still kind of positive about it lol.

0xmohit3• 10 years ago

Maybe somebody should try reaching out at +1.4083447484 to figure why the startup acted thus.

erikb6• 10 years ago

Actually many of the red flags aren't really red flags. I already considered to completely ignore this article. But some, especially 8 and 9 are quite valuable to people who have never experienced that.

The ones I consider serious are these: 1 (hire/fire fast), 4 (given responsibility without authority), 6 (unclear product), 8 (weird money habits), 9 (law problems).

Others I consider quite important: too much money without backing in team strenght and professional attitude (either founders or investors are bullshitting someone), don't trust the team (when shit hits the fan everybody will cover their ass and taking care of others may be considered breaking your employers trust), act context aware (opinion is more important than actual facts, consider when to tell which fact/idea to whom, when everybody is happy because of a successful lie then you have low leverage for the moment).

In any case I think you need to have a few of these experiences to be able to survive in a business environment. When stakes are high, information is hard to come by, and you don't have years to learn to know the other parties, then people will do unexpected things (lying, faking success, spying, or simply not supporting you when you are under attack). Important resumee point: I survived X scams.

TheActuallyer2• 10 years ago

I've experienced a quite similar situation. Moved to a new city with a promise of a nice pay and a good job for a startup. First month of the project CEO ended up in a psyc ward. Luckily I got out with my head and limbs still attached to my body.

kordless• 10 years ago

Wanting to put a good foot forward, I brushed off the confusion

This is codependence, defined.

wcummings• 10 years ago

There’s no way a startup I found on Angel.co is going to screw me over, I thought

Is this satire?

tedmiston4• 10 years ago

Based on the fact that the author called it "Angel.co" over and over instead of AngelList, I have a hunch she hadn't worked in startups before this.

maceo• 10 years ago

Wage theft causes American workers to lose an estimated $50 billion dollars per year.

Usually low-income workers, many of whom are not in a social class where they're friends with a smart lawyer, are the victims.

This is just the SV flavor of what millions of American workers suffer from year-round.

delwilliams2• 10 years ago

Sadly Silicon Valley is ripe for frauds because of the money.

poolshark• 10 years ago

These are the kind of startups that give the H-1B visa program a bad rep... sad

jamisteven• 10 years ago

I see nothing about her researching these founders prior to agreeing to work for them, nothing about a signed contract, something like this would never happen to me, sounds like this girl needs a good lesson in street smarts. Way too gullible.

readitmeow7• 10 years ago

She obviously had a contract seeing as how she had to get it revised multiple times before she signed. If you did research and couldn't find enough about the CEO, you would see the CTO, the other founder, was legitimate with press releases by companies that were eventually acquired by big names like IBM.

Saying this would never happen to you is pretentious and ignorant.

castis• 10 years ago

Sure, all the information about those people is out there now, but we don't know the state of information that she had available to her before this.

It's good that you stopped by to point out that you're better than others, though. Looks good on you.

albertcbrown4• 10 years ago

This is Charlie. I met the CEO (not sharing his name, though it is in this thread) through his brother in law, Jay. Jay worked with me at a prior company. He was a data scientist and factual. He mentioned his brother in law came to Silicon Valley to do a startup having made some money as an investment banker.

As we talked, the CEO stated he is putting in $2M to fund the startup in November. In December, with $400k or so in the company with the rest coming, we started to build. We grew steadily till about April with a prototype. At which point, the CEO kept mentioning money was coming and with a few different reasons on why it did not arrive.

I bridged May and June. As the stories piled up, I started to ask more pointed questions. I met Bernie, the lawyer who was real. Bernie has an office with Montgomery McCracken in NYC. I insisted the CEO to fly twice to NYC to meet with Bernie and resolve the funding issue. On the last trip, he claimed he got a $500k loan from his lawyer, Bernie, and his cousin, Tommy. The last payroll with ADP was made.

I did not find out till the beginning of August that the money for the last payroll came from one of the employees. I thought there was $500k available starting July. It became apparent it was not available shortly thereafter.

In July, Penny joined. We went through more stress at the company with the CEO stating every other week money was coming from a variety of sources – a line of credit from Mackie Research due to his personal connections, his money making it over, and different investors. None of it came to pass.

In August, I thought it better to let some of developers go as there was no funds to pay them and ask the other ones not to come to work until money is in the bank. An investor did come in that allowed us to make July’s payroll a month late.

I did not see any of the wire transfer confirmations till later as I was showed by a couple of the employees. I did not get a confirmation personally. The team was paid for that wire transfer (July).

In August, I tried to validate his story with his brother in law with no success. I was not able to corroborate any of his story after contacting his educational institution and prior institutional employer. This lack of trust came to a head a week ago and we parted ways.

The current story from the CEO right now is that the team will get paid for August on Monday to Wednesday this week. I have no idea if it is true.

To this day, I don’t understand the game plan from the CEO. Why accelerate into a brick wall? None of it makes sense.

I am currently out the bridge, expenses, August office rent and back pay.

It never occurred to me, till too late, that somebody would misrepresent so much of his story. For being naïve and believing in the dream, I am truly sorry.

AMC4x4• 10 years ago

Appreciate you posting here. Looks like a bunch of you were snowed. Hope you get your money back someday.

I think one bit from Penny's article is particularly spot-on, and I've experienced it first-hand, as I'm sure many of us have: "Some may question why I took the job in the first place or continued to work for them when there were so many red flags. To those people I say this: there is also a default human condition to not give up."

Shame that some people prey on that human condition.

pauljaworski• 10 years ago

Man, I feel really bad for you being out $200k (if that number is correct). What did Isaac say to you to convince you to put in that much of your own money?

How much equity were you able to hang on to when you left? (Not that it will probably ever be worth anything :/)

ryuker164• 10 years ago

ceo is probaly a con man or an idiot rich guy who inherited his money. Do a background check on him or search his name to see if any crimes come up.

Chances are VERY high he kept your $200k. He will be the only one on that burning plane ride with a financial parachute....

I suggest suing him or threatening criminal charges. he might magically find the lost payroll money and reimburse you....poor h-1b visa dudes will get jack shit.

albertcbrown4• 10 years ago

He didn't keep the money. It all went to payroll.

socrates19982• 10 years ago

Damn, this sound like a shit show. I hope no one ever works with this guy again.

btcboss• 10 years ago

CEO needs to go to Jail. I hope you and Penny make sure that happens.

erikb6• 10 years ago

You made a tough choice between your "partner" and your team. I appreciate the way you chose, and can assure you that not many people choose that way.

albertcbrown4• 10 years ago

Thank you.

ConmanTwittie• 10 years ago

All this sob story might elicit empathy in some....if it weren't for a detail that affects your credibility - who was handling the books for the company? I'll take - It was Mrs. Brown for the Win, Alex!

albertcbrown4• 10 years ago

The books reflect the above at xero. No statements were made by me or her that led to incorrect expectations. She handled ADP while we had it.

There's not much to do for finance when the bank account is empty and your CEO says there will be more money there tomorrow for awhile. I bridged for a bit and then stopped when I could no longer believe him.

geocode• 10 years ago

"Jessica"'s point of view:

https://tessfstevens.com/2016/06/10/the-new-mission-liking-y...

buckbova• 10 years ago

"You’re not trying to dupe people or trick them. You’re trying to help. You’re looking out for all of your friends who are living in their parents’ basements crying over their degrees, wishing they hadn’t taken on the student debt. You’re rallying for your parents, who are working well below their intelligence and skill sets just to put food on the table. You’re going to enable the world to stand up for itself and take back its work ethic. You’re going to change things."

Changed for the worse.

delwilliams2• 10 years ago

The reason she did not see the red flags is because that's what being conned looks like. They don't call them con artist for nothing, and he seems up the chain on mastery.

jlian• 10 years ago

I went through a similar experience. In hindsight the red flags were extremely obvious but I was also in extreme denial. I really wanted it to be true and was not willing to face whatever I would be able to dig up. So I didn't try. Paychecks were bouncing and I was still clasping onto the sliver of hope in order to not lose the job.

I was (am still am) a new grad with no experience but I had co-workers with families and responsibilities. We all wanted it to be true too badly and willfully ignored the warning signs.

leaningtower• 10 years ago

Under the assumption that the story is true, thing that I cannot assume from a blog post, this should be notified to the authorities more than be posted on HN.

Also notice that before any actual confirmation or official investigation, pointing fingers trying to find companies that match the description could be a criminal offense as well as you could damage the reputation of totally fine companies.

dragonwriter11• 10 years ago

Also notice that before any actual confirmation or official investigation, pointing fingers trying to find companies that match the description could be a criminal offense as well as you could damage the reputation of totally fine companies.

Well, I mean, that's already been done, but I don't see any criminal law that could remotely be applicable. What crime do you imagine this is?

Heck, I don't even see how posting "it appears from details in the article that it is talking about WrkRiot" could even be civil defamation, even if taking other things into account (Such as the source article) the net effect is damaging. Even if the source article would, if deanonymized, be defamatory.

Damaging reputation alone isn't generally actionable, at least in US law. Knowingly (or recklessly) making false statements that damage a company may be.

sodafountan• 10 years ago

Perhaps the person who wrote this article is smarter than we think and this is some intricate marketing plot designed to draw traffic and attention to wrkriot?

HalcyonicStorm• 10 years ago

Except that this brought a lot of bad attention to the company and the people who work there

mathattack• 10 years ago

Red flag #10: There’s a huge moral and legal difference between buying time with lies versus calculated fraud

Maybe legally, but not so much morally. The lies are part of calculated fraud. Nonetheless, a very good cautionary tale. I've seen several friends of mine chase "Too Good To Be True" dreams.

ChristopherE11• 10 years ago

Shaka, and the walls fell.

It looks like the rats are fleeing the ship:

https://medium.com/@dtunkelang/lesson-learned-ab0dc6723b8c#....

puppetmaster3• 10 years ago

reminds me of this:

http://reddit.com/r/startups/comments/3m3lp6/failed_startup_...

hannahwright• 10 years ago

Wow, just wow. The ultimate sketchy. How do companies like this expect to carry on and cover up their fraud with a simple name change?

amusedreading• 10 years ago

lol, WrkRiot just posted this response https://www.facebook.com/WrkRiot/?hc_ref=SEARCH&fref=nf

WrkRiot is considering legal action against a disgruntled former employee who has launched a slanderous campaign against WrkRiot and some of its employees via social media. While it is not our policy to discuss personnel matters, we want to make it clear that this former employee was fired for cause. Signed affidavits from current employees attest to this former employee’s failure to perform her required duties in the workplace. In addition, they attest to her participation in an attempt to undermine or oust certain members of management. This former employee demanded a sum of $50,000 upon her departure. Under no verbal agreement, contract or any other type of covenant was this person entitled to such a sum. After learning that WrkRiot would not pay what it considered extortion money, this former employee began her campaign of slanderous of activity over the Internet. WrkRiot believes this former employee’s writings have led to dangerous situations for many of our employees through the leaking of personal information and through threats being made over social media from others who have taken the former employee’s misinformation as truth. We regret having to spend time and effort on this when there is so much to do in the development of our unique application. However, we want to make it abundantly clear that the slanderous writings of a disgruntled former employee do not represent the truth about WrkRiot, its management or workforce. The racist, sexist and abusive comments our employees have received are inexcusable. Further, we want to make it clear that we will seek any and all legal remedies to end this campaign of slander.

binarybandit• 10 years ago

"The racist, sexist and abusive comments our employees have received are inexcusable."

I find it amusing what people come up with when trying to wriggle out of the shitstorms they create.

FT_intern• 10 years ago

At the same time, Penny is not the brightest bulb in the world. I don't see what she gains from exposing the company. The downside is huge from the potential lawsuits and virility of the post unless she plans to somehow monetize the audience. I guess she could start a gofundme to pay for legal fees

ryuker164• 10 years ago

Her post used aliases and didnt name specifics....they cant legally do anything becuase others played detective and figured out who was being slandered.

As a marketer this is brilliant since its good exposure. Plus the shame means she probaly will get paidor at least score payback.

MichaelBurge2• 10 years ago

Elsewhere in this thread, they already claimed that nobody in their company matches the description in the article, so case closed.

intothemild2• 10 years ago

Reality is that they have opened themselves up to a case that can be brought to the DA and the DA can pursue charges against the salary fraud.

If I was an American, I would be doing this regardless....

This facebook post of theirs just did two things

1.) Confirm its them. 2.) Lose them the ability to settle this quietly.

They could have quietly sat down with Penny and sort this out, but they didn't... that ship has sailed, they had one card in the deck to play, which was "Heres money, now take the post down and sign this non-disclosure".

But by posting it this on Facebook, then well .. they lost the ability to pretend it was not them.. there goes the ability to enforce a NDA.

They won't pay her now, the best they can do is "Don't go to the DA and we will give you the money" Which they won't do.

ChristopherE11• 10 years ago

That there was apparently not NDA required on her exit more than anything just how amateur this Choi is. All he had to do was give her an extra grand specifically as compared consideration for an NDA and nothing but the government complaints would be said. Obviously you can't prohibit the reporting of a crime but she already did that anyway.

Which makes me wonder, why isn't she under an NDA already? Every one I've signed prohibit discussing practices even after termination for cause.

st3v3r11• 10 years ago

Forging the Wells Fargo transfers is a crime. I don't believe you can use an NDA to stop someone from reporting a crime.

nottellingyou2• 10 years ago

Everyone is focus on the wrong point. Anyone could help those poor Chinese kids to get a job? They might have to go back to China

nottellingyou2• 10 years ago

Anyone can help those POOR Chinese kids. They might have to go back to China because of this.

godzillabrennus• 10 years ago

This is becoming better than an episode of Silicon Valley on HBO. I hope they release a video statement countering the claim where you can clearly see they have coke out on the table.

The CEO of this "company" is basically Russ Hanneman without the money. Instead a boat load of debt.

dang2• 10 years ago

This is not an acceptable comment on Hacker News. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12386468 and marked it off-topic.

tedmiston4• 10 years ago

To gather from all of the subthreads, the company's names include: JobSonic, 1for.one, and WrkRiot.

Disclaimer: Note that these are still technically rumors from the Hacker News comments that seem plausible but there has not been explicit confirmation, besides the author "recommending" a comment on Medium that points to this thread saying that HN has figured out the name.

intothemild2• 10 years ago

The company "job sonic" posted something on its Facebook confirming that they will be suing a former employee for the medium post..

Thats confirmation in my book

joelseq• 10 years ago

Can someone explain to me how they are selling job data when they are scraping it from other job boards? https://www.facebook.com/WrkRiot/videos/1142030219204484/

potie15• 10 years ago

was waiting for this to show up here

mattydread• 10 years ago

Here's a followup from Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/wrkriot-burned-700000-alleged...

socrates19982• 10 years ago

These guys are fucked. If she has all the screenshots and other material, they will be fighting a losing cause.

And it doesn't sound like they have any money for lawyers, lol.

This is what you get when fuck people over with giving them their severance. They have ZERO reason to hold back.

I wish this type of stuff was published more often.

ChristopherE11• 10 years ago

TechCrunch article on them trying to disappear from the Internet https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/30/wrkriot-vanishes-after-sca...

carrja99• 10 years ago

I feel the worst for those H1B1 employees. They can easily be left in legal limbo with this situation.

SamChoi• 10 years ago

Yikes. Hope I don't run into one of these when I graduate. :/

chicagotosf• 10 years ago

This guy?

https://www.facebook.com/isaac.choi

smb06• 10 years ago

They have scrubbed their online presence.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/30/wrkriot-vanishes-after-sca...

dimitar92• 10 years ago

Hopefully they can sue this Korean cheater, throw him into jail for years and deport him back to North Korea.

ChristopherE11• 10 years ago

Another follow-up by Tess Townsend of Inc.

A couple highlights:

"...I'm not happy that all these names and faces are out there." -- Penny Kim

Kim has received 10-20 invitations to apply for marketing positions in SV and Texas.

Kim received a cease and desist order via email prior to the now deleted threat of legal action posted to Facebook.

http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/medium-post-wrkriot-viral-w...

webmaven2• 10 years ago

Kim has a couple theories as to why her post struck a chord in the startup world. First, she thinks anonymizing the startup stirred interest, referencing a concept with which she became familiar after writing the post: the Streisand effect. It's the idea that hiding information can have the unintended consequence of publicizing it by motivating people to find out what's missing.

Argh. That's not the Streisand Effect, the SE is what happens when the subject tries to suppress the story, especially using legal threats (which happened too, but only quite a bit after the Medium post was getting traction).

The name of the phenomenon of secrecy driving up interest is the Information Gap effect, IIRC. Plus, in this case, we can add rubbernecking (also known as morbid curiosity) driving up interest.

ChristopherE11• 10 years ago

New details emerge in a story by the New York Times including an interview with Choi and questions about his background and allegations of not fulfilling advertising contracts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/technology/a-silicon-valle...

AKifer2• 10 years ago

Reading this story, seems to be a story straight out of Venkatesh Rao fertile mind instead of a real life story. These guys will have a tough 2016 quarter, now all the eyes left Martin Shkreli to be on them.

AKifer2• 10 years ago

From Jessica "1For.One is a start-up company in Silicon Valley, and unlike most impersonal and money hungry people you meet here, the founders have truly created a sense of family and obligation in the office. I’ve only been here a week, but feel completely integrated. Everyone is friendly and open, they work hard, but smart. It’s a breath of fresh air." https://tessfstevens.com/2016/06/10/the-new-mission-liking-y...

grangerthings• 10 years ago

This whole time, I'm surprised everyone's remained unphased by the Spongebob memes on WkrRiot's Facebook page.

thelarkinn• 10 years ago

Does anyone find this search results on ISAAC CHOI ironic? (Photo shows google search results with Poker Player for online gambling site as one of the top results).

Wonder where all that money went. ;-)

http://imgur.com/a/bX9po

zippyzealous• 10 years ago

Has anyone else had a similar shitty experience with a startup?

Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

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