Startup accused of scamming employees scrubs its online presence

Maybe I'm naive but I was struck at how empty this company's mission and vision was (nevermind its ethics, which were well-covered in the original Medium post), and yet the founder and his friend/CTO put in so much of their own money into it. Were they complete greedy fools, or is VC money that easy to glom on to? WrkRiot didn't even have a "soon-to-be parodied by Silicon Valley HBO", TEDdy nonsensical ring to it, e.g. "its like Airbnb, but for your 401K". It was just a straight up dull and stupid "Yeah, we're gonna beat Linkedin" pitch, just as if someone were to throw $1M of their money behind the claim "We'll take on Google by using advanced AI machine learning!"

According to their Crunchbase [0] (which could obviously be incomplete), there's no institutional investors listed in their initial or seed round. I mean it's one thing to waste other people's money on a dumb idea, but this seems masochistic.

[0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/1for-one#/entity

edit: Another befuddling thing besides the enormous headcount was the fact that the original whistleblower was brought in from Dallas and offered equity and a $135K salary and a signing bonus. That seems like a huge chunk of money for a marketing executive at a small tech startup. Again, ignoring the reality that he couldn't really afford her, what did the CEO imagine would be investors' reaction to such a pricey hire?

As much as I dislike 'trial by the internet & social media', in this case there seemed to be a long enough trail and corroborating evidence from others that outing the CEO involved was a necessary public service to the community.

He seems to be a serial abuser of his team and stakeholders, and the forging of payment receipts was just downright criminal. I hope there is enough evidence now for criminal action to be brought against him, and he is prevented from ever trying to run a company again in the foreseeable future.

I especially feel for the H-1Bs who were tricked into working for this character. Because they require a sponsor to remain in the US, leaving the company would also mean leaving the country and giving up a huge opportunity. Working through an unfamiliar justice system in an attempt to recover their wages is also very risky, especially if they realize the company is broke. I hope some good will come to them but I suspect this will just be a "life experience."

This happens to more startups than you can imagine. I have been severely stolen from and defrauded of shares by a startup in North Carolina. They did it to several employees and investors and remain impossible to gain contact with even while appearing on podcasts with people like Randi Zuckerberg. Getting walled out of a business even with lawyers looking over documentation due to lies and deceit is a sickening feeling.

I'm very fascinated by the phrase "disgruntled former employee". Obviously she's disgruntled, that simply means one is unhappy. But the implication is that because one is unhappy with their employment experience, one somehow loses credibility.

Where is it, and why is it, that people who one minute will rant against evil corporations on the other hand when reading about how an employee was mistreated will blame the victim? (I'm speaking generally, but for instance when Amazon's practices came to light there was a bit of victim blaming going on here.)

Why is the presumption of innocence for the employer so strong?

This goes further into hiring practices-- if you look at it objectively, hiring practices are very one sided. Employers make the demands take all of the time for questions, will rebuff questions they don't want to answer (like what's the cap table look like? how many shares outstanding on a fully diluted basis? - things you need to know to evaluate the offer) while simultaneously demanding to know your salary history- and recently I've seen reports of employers demanding poof of salary history with the threat of termination if you don't supply it.

Market forces can make one player have more power than the other, and in the great depression employers had a lot more power. but it's fascinating how the culture has enshrined that power, and people accept it.

If you complain about an employer, this is not taken as a sign the employer is bad, it's taken as a sign you are bad.

But if you complain about bad service at a restaurant, we don't assume you're a bad eater.

This seems to happen a lot with companies and individuals caught doing dodgy stuff. Not sure why though, they do realise the internet doesn't just 'forget' about things, right? That the Streisand Effect will mean this information will be screenshotted and archived everywhere and that they won't be able to fool anyone else like this?

Or that it pretty much 'confirms' their guilt for a lot of people?

But yeah, not surprising this has happened already.

From yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379518

Honestly, one's record does eventually catch up with one. This is going to last for this individual for awhile (if not forever)...

I've encountered people who reported title inflation on their LinkedIn page, oversold what they did, and when starting their own venture, due diligence pointed out severe faults the individual papered over.

Good or bad, things will catch up with you eventually.

Is it just me or there's an actual increase in scams among startups lately?

e.g. yesterday's post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12384071

You realize you're arguing with a complete stranger and telling them that the place they live is shitty right?

Is there a point where you have an ounce of self awareness and say "jeez, I'm kind of a shit person."? Just curious.

I doubt they can succeed given its on HN.