Comment by bfung | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bfung | Hacker News Reader

My read of the article in paraphrases:

    "(Arrivo)... started by former SpaceX engineer Brogan BamBrogan, who was a co-founder of Hyperloop One."

    "Two of BamBrogan’s fellow co-founders had resigned..."

    "One of the co-founders ... left in October, came to Arrivo from construction firm AECOM’s venture wing. 
     Jadon Smith, a fellow SpaceX veteran who has also worked for Lockheed Martin and the CIA, left shortly after, ..."

    ***"Arrivo was born from of the ashes of BamBrogan’s relationship with Hyperloop One.
     The co-founder was ousted from Hyperloop One in the summer of 2016 after a clash
     with fellow co-founder Shervin Pishevar, his brother Afshin Pishevar (who was chief legal officer), CEO Rob Lloyd,
    and the startup’s board of directors."

    "...that a member of the company’s leadership brought an axe into the office, displayed it,
     and also used it to punch holes into a wall.

     That person was BamBrogan,..."

Basically, unstable guy who was ousted form Hyperloop one by the whole board and officers started another, similar company, and trouble again.

Except this time, trouble is in charge.

I don't know if BamBrogan is an "unstable guy" or not. But I'm not at all sure your summary "who was ousted form Hyperloop one by the whole board and officers" is accurate based on what was reported at the time.

For example, from an article in Wired [1]:

> The lawsuit against Hyperloop One includes a security camera image of a man, apparently Afshin Pishevar, holding rope and walking through the office. BamBrogan allegedly found a noose on his desk after complaining about company operations.

The axe is the only thing that seems weird, everything else you quoted can easily be explained by the fact that they'd failed to secure more funding and had to shut down even though they didn't want to. Many of us on Hacker News have no doubt experienced this kind of situation first hand.

Also I should mention that although Arrivo was started by ex-Hyperloop One people they were definitely not doing a hyperloop system.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/07/hyperloop-lawsuit-brogan-bambr...

I total get the stress of getting funding or not - been there myself this past year.

But axes and nooses are not normal. What kind of passive-aggressive childish behavior is this? How about sitting down and talk business like adults, state and TALK about each person's perspective of things, and not go psycho? Ousting maybe normal, but if things were normal, the usual news wouldn't be "ousted" - the worse language is usually "parted ways with disagreement".

Neither of them are normal, but they're not the same thing. The allegation is that BamBrogan was the target in the noose incident, and there is some security footage which seems to corroborate it. In the axe incident BamBrogan allegedly took the axe to the office wall. That's pretty crazy but so far nobody has claimed he was trying to intimidate somebody else. In this case it's maybe interesting to note that it wasn't just any axe, but rather "The CEO [BamBrogan] had built the axe at Jeff Bezos’ MARS conference this past spring." [1]

The guy definitely seems flamboyant, but that's not the same as unstable. I mean he might be unstable too, but I don't think one can draw that conclusion from the reporting.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/14/18128848/hyperloop-arriv...

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