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Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

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Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#81

Post by pyre »

desdiv wrote: post #71
pyre wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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-s…

From what I understand, at the point they declared bankruptcy they (Target Canada) didn't have enough money to meet payroll obligations, and the trust was seeded from Target's US operation. It Target Canada had just been standalone chain (i.e. no Target USA), then this probably wouldn't have been possible.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#83

Post by st3v3r »

pyre wrote: post #59

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.

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.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#84

Post by pyre »

foxylad wrote: post #80

> 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…

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

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#85

Post by mugejin »

MichaelBurge wrote: post #67
bArray wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Isaac Choi" - I'm starting to imagine the lie was that he had a Chinese company scrub his name and he's not called Isaac or Michael. Having other people pay the cheques saves giving his name away too.

His real name is probably "Yi Suk Choi".

How can you tell that this is probably his real name?

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#86

Post by mcpherrinm »

hackaflocka wrote: post #73
xiphias wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

They don't at all. I've seen significant errors before. It's usually vaguely correct, but when you've got a manipulative liar running your company, Crunchbase isn't going to help.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#88

Post by 8KjRu5VAAeMBIZm »

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…

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#89

Post by readitmeow »

pyre wrote: post #84
foxylad wrote: post #80

> 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…

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

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

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#90

Post by h4nkoslo »

trcollinson wrote: post #61
h4nkoslo wrote: post #34

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.

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…

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.
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