31–40 of 54 posts
I worked at ROO Media (which KIT Digital acquired) and met with Kaleil a number of times. None of us who worked there are even remotely surprised. No signs of revenue, yet we would spend like crazy and even acquire companies with magical "stock money". It was the most corrupt place I have ever worked in my life. The COO was a ghost who just spent money (like staying at hotels all the time, even though he lived an hou…
Have you seen the movie? There is ZERO evidence in the movie that either Kaleil or his co-founder Tom are talented or successful. They're certainly, as mikek says in his comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10547832 , "driven"! But that's why they were seeking success by dishonest means in the first place. As IMDB says: > The process of building the business focuses on obtaining venture capital based solel…
You just described every VC and LP in Silicon Valley. They're not working and creating value, they see a big pile of money and try to scheme up a way to skim a bunch off the top, making life harder for everyone who's actually contributing. It's no surprise that "entrepreneurs" get swept up in this thinking as well.
Have you seen the movie? There is ZERO evidence in the movie that either Kaleil or his co-founder Tom are talented or successful. They're certainly, as mikek says in his comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10547832 , "driven"! But that's why they were seeking success by dishonest means in the first place. As IMDB says: > The process of building the business focuses on obtaining venture capital based solel…
The problem is that some of the stories of great success are actually quite close to the ones that are outright scams. It's harder to tell the difference than it probably should be. Around the 2000's there were a number of acquisitions of companies that were mostly hot air. It's a game of hot potato (don't pick it up!), if the investors make bank on your BS company then nobody will complain (except for the acquiring…
On the other hand there's the unicorn phenomenon which I still do not fully understand. It's obviously some kind of game to artificially pump valuation, but I'm not sure why yet... especially since over-inflated valuations seem to almost guarantee a down round. Who benefits there?
I worked at ROO Media (which KIT Digital acquired) and met with Kaleil a number of times. None of us who worked there are even remotely surprised. No signs of revenue, yet we would spend like crazy and even acquire companies with magical "stock money". It was the most corrupt place I have ever worked in my life. The COO was a ghost who just spent money (like staying at hotels all the time, even though he lived an hou…
Who invests in these things? Even more puzzling: how is it that these hucksters keep raising money to found another startup? I've seen this phenomenon before. I called them "financial serial killers" -- hustlers who raise money, vaporize it all, then raise again. They're "serial failed entrepreneurs," and we're not talking failures where they legitimately tried. We're talking failures that involve lots of stupid asshat money-burning and nothing much of substance at all.
My mind boggles. It's like there's some clique of investors out there who believe in supporting sociopaths as some twisted form of philanthropy. Either that or they're making money too through some as-yet-mysterious means.
I do have one total speculation:
Is it possible that there could be some kind of money laundering going on here? Are these money-burning "investments" actually something else? Sometimes stupid things actually aren't stupid if they're viewed from the right perspective, and things that make no business sense might actually make a lot of sense in some other way.
I worked at ROO Media (which KIT Digital acquired) and met with Kaleil a number of times. None of us who worked there are even remotely surprised. No signs of revenue, yet we would spend like crazy and even acquire companies with magical "stock money". It was the most corrupt place I have ever worked in my life. The COO was a ghost who just spent money (like staying at hotels all the time, even though he lived an hou…
"like staying at hotels all the time, even though he lived an hour away by train" Who invests in these things? Even more puzzling: how is it that these hucksters keep raising money to found another startup ? I've seen this phenomenon before. I called them "financial serial killers" -- hustlers who raise money, vaporize it all, then raise again. They're "serial failed entrepreneurs," and we're not talking failures whe…
I worked at ROO Media (which KIT Digital acquired) and met with Kaleil a number of times. None of us who worked there are even remotely surprised. No signs of revenue, yet we would spend like crazy and even acquire companies with magical "stock money". It was the most corrupt place I have ever worked in my life. The COO was a ghost who just spent money (like staying at hotels all the time, even though he lived an hou…
"like staying at hotels all the time, even though he lived an hour away by train" Who invests in these things? Even more puzzling: how is it that these hucksters keep raising money to found another startup ? I've seen this phenomenon before. I called them "financial serial killers" -- hustlers who raise money, vaporize it all, then raise again. They're "serial failed entrepreneurs," and we're not talking failures whe…
I have no idea how they kept raising money, outside to say, Video was hot at the time, and the corruption was buried in complicated accounting fraud so it wasnt front and center.
If you want the details check here - https://m.fbi.gov/#https://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-release...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"like staying at hotels all the time, even though he lived an hour away by train" Who invests in these things? Even more puzzling: how is it that these hucksters keep raising money to found another startup ? I've seen this phenomenon before. I called them "financial serial killers" -- hustlers who raise money, vaporize it all, then raise again. They're "serial failed entrepreneurs," and we're not talking failures whe…
It was a publicly traded company.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was a publicly traded company.
I thought you had to meet certain criteria to become public, like showing X quarters of consecutive growth and bend-over-and-grab-your-ankles audits and such? Or is there some wild west of penny stocks and cocaine that I don't know about?