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Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

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Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#481

Post by SauceOlitoDev »

Theodores wrote: post #335
GuiA wrote: 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…

> 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 be…

Excessive use of the 1st person personal pronoun is a huge tell.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#482

Post by socrates1998 »

albertcbrown wrote: post #297

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…

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

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#483

Post by manigandham »

jomamaxx wrote: post #449
manigandham wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a big deal, running a business requires following the law. There is no special "startup" case where you're allowed to be loose on your obligations. Accurate payroll costs somewhere between $50-100 per month per employee with dozens of great vendors available. This is an incredibly trivial cost (especially compared to the fines for breaking these laws) and means there's no excuse to not have things in order. If…

"It is a big deal, running a business requires following the law." Again - I would suggest that maybe you have never started a company or done payroll, or paid anyone yourself. It is not required to have 'payroll' to pay individuals for services rendered, nor have properly managed books. I once created a 'side company' to manage some IP. The company had no employees. All participants (there were five of us over time,…

I've started several companies with my own employees and I've always paid them correctly and on time with proper payroll and accounting. That's because it's the right and legal way to conduct business.

If you're talking about instances where you use contractors instead, then that's an entirely different scenario.

As long as you treat employees and contractors separately and properly, there are no issues - but having employees and paying them like contractors is illegal. Invoicing is not a replacement for payroll.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#484

Post by mentat »

xenophon wrote: post #460
kelukelugames wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you too. Speaking up is a privilege. Hard to do with a mortgage and a family. That's why when I worked at Redfin, employees rather leave instead of complain. Retaliation is real.

An aside that seems relevant to a general discussion of "name vs not name": I've noticed that you (or a set of users that share your very unique username, perhaps) spend a ton of time attacking Redfin on various social media accounts (HN, Reddit, Facebook). I used to work there, too, and it's strange that you consistently describe the company in a negative way that is unfamiliar at best and completely unwarranted to…

This probably isn't the best phrasing:

> It sounds like you had a really bad experience, which of course is your prerogative.

Sharing it might be someone's prerogative but labelling their experience this way doesn't feel up to HN standards.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#486

Post by thatthatis »

jomamaxx wrote: post #159
uiri wrote: post #37

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 ch…

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/

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.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#487

Post by magic_beans »

pauljaworski wrote: post #395
mikeryan wrote: post #307

I think that story is about another startup called Vingle. Vingle ( https://www.vingle.net/ ) Looks like Tess has been attaching herself to some bombs.

To be honest, she doesn't seem very talented, so she's just taking whatever she can get. In one of her personal blog posts, she said that she applied to 200 companies and got 3 responses - one of which was WrkRiot.

That's horrifying.

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#489

Post by newacct510510 »

Animats wrote: post #105

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.

https://twitter.com/ADP/status/751377837656014852

Re: Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

#490

Post by abritinthebay »

mugenjin9 wrote: post #414
readitmeow wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just took down the facebook page edit: its back up

Haha wow here is what they wrote before they took it down http://imgur.com/a/Tf5bM

So... they are admitting they fired her for cause - which, given the cause, is illegal under CA law?

Yeah, some real geniuses at work here. No wonder they took it down.

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