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Comment by abraca | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that's an accurate summary of the complaint.

Seems pretty accurate to me, do you mind stating what exactly you think is inaccurate about the summary?

The summary misses the focus on false metrics that is the core of the complaint, and emphasizes the "hiring 40 people for growth team" part. It sounds like the summary is saying "he thought Snapchat would hire a team around him and they didn't" vs "he pointed out Snapchat's metrics were inaccurate and then they fired him."

I would summarize the complaint as:

Snapchat hired this guy from Facebook. He claims Snapchat falsely represented their growth during the process (two metrics which are redacted turned out to be false.) After he joined, he alerted the VP of finance that some of Snapchat's representations were false, who apparently agreed with some of it and told their VP of Comms to stop representing that to advertisers and some redacted group. He thinks that Snapchat fired him because of this, that they thought he would "blow the whistle" on upcoming IPO. Further, Snapchat continually pressured him to breach his confidentiality agreements with Facebook. After he was fired, Snapchat told people internally and externally that he was incompetent.

In the details, a lot is redacted but it mentions there were specific metrics given to him in the hiring process - that were also given while raising capital in Asia - that were false.

Wow, this means that Snapchat's valuation went down a lot just because of this one case.

Well, no, this is still all alleged. It will have to stick. Even if it is all true as presented here, it may not have a significant impact. For reference, take a look at how Facebook publicly admitting it was misrepresenting certain advertising metrics has impacted the long term outlook of the company's stock (it hasn't). Also take a look at how long Theranos maintained its valuation despite widespread, grievous fraud.

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