51–60 of 146 posts
Design tip: if a quote is a quote, have a quote style. If a quote is the entire content of your article and is many paragraphs long, rethink styling it as a quote and instead label it, or something.
With that many red flags, why would anyone accept an investment and enter a relationship with such an organization? The things people will do for funding... I'd rather have a day job or a consulting gig in a heartbeat compared to a situation like that.
But the broader point is: if you need investment and can't find anyone else, it's very easy to convince yourself that it won't be as bad as it will.
"The weird thing is that the MD keeps making intros, speaking highly of us and sending people our way. We think she does it because she doesn’t want us talking about our experiences. " Well that doesn't seem too bad, it even feels like the story had a happy ending as it sounds like they've been able to get investors and the startup is working.
It more feels like the MD wanted to keep schmoozing and acting important ignoring the reality of the situation. There have been a few stories over the passed couple of years where someone name drops and schmoozes to elevate their own profile. In the end, they are found out to be frauds or worse. Any area that gets a lot of hype will have those that want to cling on.
I wouldn't be surprised if "she" demanded something if she even knew of an investor OP's company ended up taking on.
My experience was not nearly this bad, but still horrifying for me, my co-founder, and our families. We had been talking off and on with an accelerator for about a month. We had pitched them, had a few calls, but lived on the other side of the country. They wanted to meet in person which was really not feasible for us. We worked at full-time jobs while hacking away on the side and scraping together whatever money we…
I think these kind of stories need to include name and not be anonymous, I hate when people get away with this kind of behavior because no one is interested in calling them out on this shitty behavior.
No offense, I'm sure you have your reasons.
This story is really frustrating and sad to hear, but I have to say, in the three years I've been working on my startup, never once has anything good happened from paying for access to any type of person (investors or customers), using any currency (equity or cash). We did YCombinator, which could be described as an "access" play, but apart from that, every time someone has offered us access to something in return fo…
This story is really frustrating and sad to hear, but I have to say, in the three years I've been working on my startup, never once has anything good happened from paying for access to any type of person (investors or customers), using any currency (equity or cash). We did YCombinator, which could be described as an "access" play, but apart from that, every time someone has offered us access to something in return fo…
But the best "gatekeepers" are not the ones that guard the gate, they are the ones who can show you where the gates even are, it's just very difficult to be able to distinguish the real valuable guys from the "hustlers" without having a lot of experiences yourself.
Have fun figuring out which one it is: http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators
https://angel.co/socraticlabs seems to fit the bill. Of course, keep in mind that this could very well not be the accelerator.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we were talking about a young aspiring writer-director moving to Hollywood and similar shenanigans happened, we would not be surprised would we? Based on the OP and your story, I guess tech start ups have truly "arrived".
Funny enough, this all happened in Los Angeles. :)
This story is really frustrating and sad to hear, but I have to say, in the three years I've been working on my startup, never once has anything good happened from paying for access to any type of person (investors or customers), using any currency (equity or cash). We did YCombinator, which could be described as an "access" play, but apart from that, every time someone has offered us access to something in return fo…
"never once has anything good happened from paying for access" ... "We did YCombinator"
YC is the prototypical model for this.