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Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

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Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#261

here you go. choiwisely 8 hours ago [-] > Employees and investors absolutely need the right to know about the people doing this "Michael" the CEO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaacchae1981 "Charlie" the CTO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albrown "Jessica" the CMO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tess-stevens-28bb9138 Company: http://www.wrkriot.com/ + https://www.linkedin.com/company/7587861

thanks for the details, though my rant is more about this behavior in general, and not so much about this specific instance :)

I agree. People have no incentive to change unless we name names.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#262
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…

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.

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?

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

OTOH, you can generate paystubs through literally any halfway-decent bookkeeping software. I get running a lean shop, but once you expand from one employee to two, one of your first investments should be in some sort of accounting system in order to make sure every last goddamn penny is tracked with as long and complete a paper trail as possible.

Any good entrepreneur knows that if you don't know where every cent of your VC money is going, you're going to get eaten alive at your next investor meeting or VC round. On the other hand, if you can pull out a spreadsheet that says "We spent exactly xx% of our previous round on payroll, xx% on rent and utilities, xx% on chinese food, etc." you're going to have a much easier time convincing investors that you're a business that knows what the hell they're doing.

Not having decent bookkeeping can't be chalked up to "fast-moving startup woes", it's just irresponsible, and there's no excuse for not being on top of it.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can invoice the company. It's not a big deal. Nonononono. You're hired as an employee. There is a legal and ethical agreement for them to pay you at the intervals agreed upon in your contract. There are no ifs or buts about it, no invoicing them, no excuses for 'just started'. Payroll is NOT hard.

"Nonononono. You're hired as an employee. There is a legal and ethical agreement for them to pay you at the intervals agreed upon in your contract. There are no ifs or buts about it, no invoicing them, no excuses for 'just started'. Payroll is NOT hard." No - you are completely wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong - or even remotely immoral - about paying using invoicing while a company gets going. It's common an…

Could you enlighten me as to the mechanics?

If my contract says I'll be paid monthly on the 15th, when do I send in the invoice? Are the payment terms net-10, net-30, or longer?

Do I need to break out sick or vacation days as its own line item? What about the deductions?

Who is responsible for figuring out and paying the payroll tax? Because it sounds like asking for an invoice is a way for the company to avoid paying unemployment tax, social security, etc. That in itself would be a red flag.

If the invoice is not paid, can I file it as a wage claim or do I use some other mechanism?

These are the obvious questions. If as you say it a common and normal practice, there must be some place which describes the basic details.

If payroll is hard for a company, why is it any easier for the employee to figure out these payroll details?

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#265

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?

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

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#266
post #235
post #166

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.

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

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

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#267

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.

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

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#268

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.

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

[deleted]

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#269
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.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#270
post #120
post #14

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 fr…

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 expl…

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.

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