This article makes a fair point. Whether AppGratis breaks the guidelines or not - Apple did act in a very unprofessional manner. They could have waited a day or two and given the CEO a right to respond before pulling it.

But this is the risk you take when you build a Business around Apple's app store - any intelligent investors and employees should have known the risks, before committing to AppGratis.

As a sidenote, I'm really struggling to compute how AppGratis has 45 members of staff - whichever way I look at it (developers, sales, accounts) I can't see them needing more than 10.