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Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

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Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#201

Post by d0100 »

"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-...

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#202

Post by toomanybeersies »

kijin wrote: post #150
SakiWatanabe wrote: post #31

>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?

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 pr…

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

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#203

Post by mgkimsal »

d0100 wrote: post #201

"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 a…

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?

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#204

Post by d0100 »

paulcole wrote: post #53
programmer_guy wrote: post #41

Hey guys, just wanted to clear the air on some of the speculation: I'm actually with WrkRiot and can guarantee you we're not the company in question: I've got many weeks of paid on time pay stubs sitting right here. Plus we didn't have anyone matching any of the descriptions in this article. Interesting article though, it's really shitty some have bad experiences like this.

"The last time I checked the team page on the site, Michael changed his profile picture to a bulldog" http://www.wrkriot.com/team-1/ Coincidence?

Doesn't really matter, the internet never forgets... http://imgur.com/a/3XLIw

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#205

Post by jomamaxx »

einhverfr wrote: post #186
jomamaxx wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Pay people in regular ways through regular channels. Seriously, though, ADP delivers paystubs. If they were using ADP, they would have gotten paystubs.

When a company has just started, they may have not set this up.

You can invoice the company. It's not a big deal.

Again - of all flags - lack of pay stubs is the least of them if it's just a garage startup with 3-ish people.

The actual exchange of money is 100x a stronger indicator of health than the presence of a stub.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#206

Post by StavrosK »

pluma wrote: post #172
StavrosK wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Shouldn't we be encouraging people who out bad actors?

"Name and shame" feels good but there's a huge danger in pillorying people just based on a single person's account. WrkRiot seems to be the company in question and their online presence is so laughable nobody here likely feels bad for making fun of them, especially because of the behaviour the author describes. But the story is not just about a company but also about individuals. Consider WrkRiot's head of marketing,…

I guess that's true.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#207

Post by barry-cotter »

cyberferret wrote: post #184
sanderjd wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

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"...

You're not helping yourself. Your first post made you sound judgmental and ageist and this one is more of the same.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#208

Post by jacquesm »

einhverfr wrote: post #182
choiwisely wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

And how they tread people they consider to be 'below' them, such as waiters, cab drivers and so on. That's a pretty good tell.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#209

Post by yjboudreau »

kyrias wrote: post #185
programmer_guy wrote: post #41

Hey guys, just wanted to clear the air on some of the speculation: I'm actually with WrkRiot and can guarantee you we're not the company in question: I've got many weeks of paid on time pay stubs sitting right here. Plus we didn't have anyone matching any of the descriptions in this article. Interesting article though, it's really shitty some have bad experiences like this.

Disregarding everything else pointed out in this thread, there's also the part where the website for the older name of the company, 1for.one, still lists Penny Kim as the Marketing Director: http://web.1for.one/digital-press-kit/ And, just in case they now decide to remove that, I also saved it to the wayback machine, available here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160829104022/http://web.1for.o... So good try, scumbag…

On their new site, the screenshot under the "HOW IT WRKS" section still references their old company name;"1for.one": http://www.wrkriot.com/#tour-section

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#210

Post by dec0dedab0de »

d0100 wrote: post #201

"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 a…

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.
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