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Comment by mvind | Hacker News Reader

"The president of the Ford Foundation, Mr. Walker, said in an email that he had confidence in Ozy. “We need new media companies to challenge the status quo, shake things up, and go deep on the issues that matter most,” he said. “In an increasingly diverse world, it’s no coincidence that a company with co-founders of Black and Indian descent would be so successful.” Remember this is the sort person investing capital nowadays..

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I’m glad someone is pointing this out. The article makes it sound like the accused company is wrapped up in a lot of social justice propaganda. Hucksters like this CEO know how to leverage woke messaging to their benefit. Woke is good for business.

That their first instinct was to frame the excuse as empathy for an employee struggling with a “mental health episode” says it all. They know their audience.

Their YouTube Channel [1] makes it immediately obvious they do not have anything close to a consistent viewership audience of millions. Anyone who invested in this should fire their entire due diligence staff. Existing investors are the main idiots here, with Goldman only redeeming themselves at the last minute. YouTube doesn’t have much skin (no pun intended) in the game. Nobody is gonna pursue this further because it will look bad.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/OZY

This is what made me angry about this story the most. "Mental health episode" is quickly becoming a universal excuse anybody can use for anything for mild discomfort to downright criminal behavior. Elizabeth Holmes is going down the same path in her defense. Woke is good for business, let's see if good enough to stay out of jail. For Samir Rao, it probably is.

Holy shit they have multiple videos with zero views and tons more with less than 10 or less than 100 views.

For a company that claims to have 25 million newsletter subscribers?

So, I don't want to say they're completely on the up-and-up, but you _are_ looking at the corporate YouTube channel.

Their "Carlos Watson Show" channel looks a lot more legit (though nowhere near the numbers they're claiming): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyF0994XbriKL_Vss0fTUMw

and they also produce podcasts, news articles, and newsletters that presumably have some subscribers: https://www.ozy.com/pg/podcast/ https://www.ozy.com/pg/news-and-politics/ https://www.ozy.com/newsletters/

Are we looking at the same Carlos Watson show? Looking at their most recent upload, it has 363 views in 3 days, and that's actually above average.

Well, ‘a lot’ is relative… But yes, I agree with you.

> Their "Carlos Watson Show" channel looks a lot more legit

Best part of 100k subscribers - and views for the videos 1 week ago: 223, 223000, 249, 188, 82, 232, 570, 123, 14000, 102.

I guess they forgot to buy followers for the Carlos Watson Show instagram account, 1,075 followers. Although it does get about as many likes and comments as the posts on the 'corporate' Instagram account with its 655k followers.

They're just vapid and corporate, and vapid and corporate means a lot of warmed over cultural studies buzzwords. Raising capital based on wokeness is a no-lose situation (ask Theranos.) As an investor, you can count your investment as pseudo-charity work in your press releases and reports.

It has to be some kind of money laundering scam, or other fraud, right?

Surely, no matter how out of touch they are, these old investors understand that not a single teen and college studens actually watches Ted Talks every day, reads Vox, listens to the NYT Daily on their way to classes, and has the Open Society Foundations RSS feed on their phone, right? They understand no one actually gives a F** about "media companies that challenge the status quo, shake things up, and go deep on the issues that matter most". Come on! The most "media" they watch is Linus Media Group, the Daily Show, and John Oliver. Only slightly exaggerating. It's impossible for them to be this out of touch!

Is there any data to back this up? IIRC, the NYT is performing very well in the 20-something demographic.

Also, IME generally people start reading more seriously, such as the NY Times, etc., when they're older; we need data on how such a media company performs in markets relative to some standard for realistic expectations. I'm sure the NY Times has few readers among high schoolers, but that doesn't indicate future problems

Not an investor. Never worked as an investor. Only worked for charities. Marc Lasry, however, is a very well-known investor.

Investing and charity does seem to be merging in quite a puzzling way. Saying that this company has been "so successful" after the founders have been caught committing fraud (not in the legal sense) is inexplicable.

I worked in finance. If this happened at a company that I recommended, I would have lost my job (I actually know a fund manager who had a well-publicised 5% position in a company that failed, they had institutional money only so the reaction was swift...50% drop in AUM, investors demanded they fire 75% of the analyst team...this does happen in finance). I guess not everyone has to play by those rules.

Ironically, it sounds just like old media. Pay a few good 'ol boys to put out the stuff I like and agree with. I will lose all my money but...who cares?

The president of the Ford Foundation might attend the same cocktail parties as the investment leadership at the US's large banks, but you can rest easy knowing that (1) both are still very cool with fossil fuels, and (2) only the latter is investing any meaningful amount of capital.

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