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Comment by dogfood123 | Hacker News Reader

This is an entirely bogus history. She had a tech co-founder and cut him out. I met him back in 2009. https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=8860093

Why lie about it?

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The person at the LinkedIn link is Sarvjeet Ahuja. He claims [1] [2] to be a co-founder of Wanelo, and former CTO. I haven't found him mentioned in any documentation from the company, as opposed to just being from him - except one. In the company's CrunchBase profile, he is listed as being a co-founder back in 2009 [3]. I don't know enough about CrunchBase profiles to say whether this should be considered reliable evidence; can someone with more experience confirm?

Additionally, a VC report from 2011 talked about how "both founders have extensive knowledge of the high-tech industry" [4]. Another described Sarvjeet's extensive experience [5].

[1] https://angel.co/sarvjeet

[2] http://www.crunchbase.com/person/sarvjeet-ahuja

[3] http://www.crunchbase.com/company/wanelo

[4] http://gecr.co.uk/file_download/45/

[5] http://tmtinvestments.com/i/pdf/Wanelo%20RNS%20(22%20Nov%201...

The first email shown in slide 14 of the OP slideshare [1] has "me, sarvjeet, Ann" listed as recipients...

[1] http://www.slideshare.net/500startups/eric-koger-cofounder-c...

I'm not sure that she - the founder - is lying in this presentation (though she fails to mention her technical cofounder). I think it's more that the title of this submission, which was presumably not made by her, was inaccurate (and has since been changed to its current title which is more accurate).

Lots of companies screw their technical cofounders. I was the technical cofounder of a company that was later acquired, but never received the $12.8 million check I was supposed to and didn't have the resources to fight back against a maniacal cofounder flush with $60+ million in new cash from the acquisition. That doesn't mean that others can't learn from the company's story, even if only told selectively. It just means that the people that wound up in charge are perhaps not the kind of people you would want to do business with.

> I was the technical cofounder of a company that was later acquired, but never received the $12.8 million check I was supposed to and didn't have the resources to fight back against a maniacal cofounder flush with $60+ million in new cash from the acquisition.

Not to derail, but let's hear that story. Seems like hiring a lawyer would be a no-brainer if you were due $12.8m.

It's a long story, but I am still in the process of pursuing it legally. When I first learned of the acquisition, I didn't have the resources to pursue it, and even today don't have millions sitting around to pay attorneys. I sent a letter to the acquiring company explaining the situation and demanding that I receive my cut, and they actually responded with an extortionate threat in writing. We are now pursuing a civil federal extortion case against both the acquirer and my cofounder.

But, as of this moment, despite my name being on the company's first and primary patent, having written all of its initial code, having envisioned the entire concept of the company myself, and even having named the company, I have seen exactly $0 from an acquisition I was supposed to receive 20% of. Even better, with $60 million in his pocket, my womanizing, alcoholic, conniving cofounder suddenly found Jesus and now fancies himself a televangelist of sorts. At last contact with him, he was "praying for me". Go figure.

So yeah, be careful when working with others. My cofounder would have been considered by anyone that looked at him to be beyond reproach. He was not.

Just a word of caution, if you're pursuing legal actions, you might consider not posting about any details publicly. Talk to your lawyer before you do anything...

I thought about that, but I've said nothing here that would hinder my case. They outright stole from me, and then when I called them on it, they responded with extortion. They aren't in a great legal position.

> I've said nothing here that would hinder my case

Any good lawyer will tell you the same piece of advice: "never say anything." It does absolutely zero positive good for your case and can only serve to hinder it later. It's very difficult sometimes to keep from providing what you consider to be valuable feedback for others, but you have your own interests to consider first.

I don't understand. Did you not have company equity in your name? As far as I understand, it would be impossible to acquire the company, its patents, and associated technology without proper paperwork?

We believe what happened is that he tore up my contract without telling me, established a new, clean corporate entity after pushing me out (though my contract was supposedly still valid, it was with the old entity), and simply transferred all intellectual property to the new entity. He kept the name the same but changed it from LLC to a corporation. The acquiring company claims never to have heard my name, other than seeing it on the company's primary patent. It's a big legal mess.

All of these things should have been notarized and filed in the state you formed the LLC in. There are records for all of this, and if the IP was in the name of the old LLC, which you were a Member of, he shouldn't have been able to do any of these actions unless he just forged your signature.

Seems odd to me. Find a lawyer, if you have a convincing case they might work pro bono at first if they can foresee a big payoff.

you should probably have made sure your name is on all the dozens of 20-page security contracts you signed when creating, incorporating, running, and selling the company.

Any name?

I probably shouldn't say here, but since I've posted the info before here years ago, I guess it doesn't really matter.

http://anakam.com (redirects to Equifax, who bought the company and tried to extort me, original company was Anakam LLC).

As much as I'm interested and curious to hear the details, I really wish you would delete all the comments you've made about this. I would hate it if they were able to convince a judge that your case is invalid based on something careless you said on the internet.

My bet is that he's already explored that avenue, and that the business relationship was not properly specified in writing and that it's the unsolvable "my word against your word" problem now.

Hoping that everyone get's that right the first time is of course illusional; may you all learn that lesson by being screwed out of a moderate 4 digit amount early in your careers!

If you have any evidence to your claim of $12.88 mm, I imagine there are lawyers that would be willing to take your case on contingency...did you not even try to seek one out?

Technical folks screw business cofounders too. Look at facebook.

Have you thought about hiring a lawyer on contingency?

On slide 14 of the presentation, there's a screenshot of an email thread that he's part of.

Mirror, in case it gets taken down: http://i.imgur.com/OmultA0.png

The phrasing entirely bogus seems hyperbolic. She may have left out a (key?) piece of information, but does that invalidate the summary of what the team achieved?

The comment you're replying to was referring to the original, now redacted, title of the HN Post, which was "Single, female, non-tech founder with no team...and her first 1 million users", which makes the phrasing less hyperbolic.

Agreed. I would rewrite on hindsight. This is an artful retelling that misleads via omission.

Because that's how you get in the news.

And no self respecting tech news site will admit its wrong once it's got that ad revenue

Does anyone have evidence of this claim that doesn't require a LinkedIn account to view?

Try http://in.linkedin.com/in/sarvjeetahuja (works for me without being logged in to LinkedIn).

You and this LinkedIn user don’t know anyone in common

Perhaps her comment that she was single and non-technical is true. She could have found her co-founder on her own and gave it a shot, but that relationship didn't work out for any number of reasons, leaving her on her own again. Who knows. Finding co-founders that fit isn't easy!

Thank you HN for instantly voting this up to the top.

A woman builds a big business from scratch and rather than wondering why it took so long for her to get funding we instantly latch on to a second-hand report that she might've had a falling out with someone before her site even started taking off.

Ignoring the fact that this isn't incompatible with the presentation at all or that there's plenty of male founders who we know pulled shitty moves in the beginning; why exactly did we vote this up this quickly?

I think HN has a very low tolerance for bullshit, no matter what your background or situation is. If you had a tech co-founder, then parted ways with them before getting funding, then advertise yourself has being solo with no co-founder people are going to call you on it.

She says "no tech cofounder" when she was looking around for funding, and mentions it only to the extent that it makes it more difficult to get funding. The next slides are all about the technical team.

Plenty of "co-founders" disappear in early stage startups that take a long time to get going, and at that point they're no longer co-founders, they were just associated people.

I think that HN has a very low tolerance for some sorts of bullshit. But it apparently it has a high tolerance for bullshit questions about people that aren't involved with a startup's current success.

It's important to get your facts right before you leap to someone's defense, or castigate others for withholding judgement. If you look at vadsye's link[1] to the Nov 2011 investment announcement, you'll see that Sarveet is given equal billing as the then tech leader.

Something - I don't know what, but she's certainly not being forthright about it - must have happened between then and the new "this is what a real CTO looks like" guy took over.

So there's enough there that merits hesitating before making a woman-in-tech hero of her. It's not misogynistic to say so either.

[1] http://tmtinvestments.com/i/pdf/Wanelo%20RNS%20(22%20Nov%201...

It's a sad, sad state of affairs. Especially seeing the points for my comment cycle up and down as rapidly as they are. 12,4,7,4,7,1 so far :(

After reading Sam's last two blog posts I just decided to reconsider and apply to YC after all; but the atmosphere here is so toxic that I can't help but feel that I'd spend more energy on dealing with YC misogyny than actually participating.

I wouldn't let the atmosphere on HN deter you from applying to YC. YC is far from perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than a semi-anonymous internet forum.

I had a female (technical) cofounder, and her general take on YC was that she was treated well by the partners, and didn't encounter any blatant sexism from the batch, but many founders in the batch were young techie guys who gravitated toward conversing with other guys, so she really only got to know a subset of the batch (other women, plus the minority of male founders who were comfortable talking to women). Also, she felt there was a general assumption (among the batch, not the partners) that male founders were technical, but female founders were non-technical, which affected how people interacted with her in subtle ways. YC could do more to educate founders about unconscious bias (and for all I know, they have), but at least in our batch, I think that would have been considered somewhat beyond the scope of the program. I don't think she'd ever characterize it as "YC misogyny."

HN, on the other hand, is probably more representative of the attitude of the tech world at large, and possibly a bit worse. YC-founder HN comments are almost universally more civil and enlightened than the bulk of the comments on the site.

Apply to YC, or don't, that decision is yours. But as long as you're in the tech world, you're not going to avoid any extra sexism by avoiding YC.

This is a very informative comment. Sounds like a familiar environment to me. To the person you were responding to, sounds like YC still may have a lot to offer but you'll have to figure out if you can deal with the low-grade non-intentional but still-present social exclusion.

the atmosphere here is so toxic

1. I can't say since I haven't been through YC, but I imagine that HN, a site that's open to every joe schmoe on the internet, is not a good reflection of the population that's accepted to YC (probably the most exclusive start-up accelerator).

2. I don't know the truth of the original claim (presumably neither do you). My question is this, if the original claim that there was a technical co-founder that got pushed out is true, is it toxic for dogfood123 to state it?

I guess I'm saying it seems like its premature to say it's 'toxic'. I agree that if there are malicious users making up lies about female founders, that's toxic. OTOH, if the claim is true, I struggle to see how talking about reality is toxic.

If I may, I would dearly hope that YC itself, rather than a loosely affiliated internet forum where anyone can participate, has orders of magnitude less misogyny.

Also, if anyone was wondering why pg was trying out comment endorsement, this is why. I wouldn't be surprised if Hacker News was shut down entirely in the future. I wonder if it is the principal discouraging factor for female applicants to YC.

FWIW, why not apply, go meet the people in person, then decide if there will be more misogyny than useful participation.

You are a guy[1][2]. Why would you "spend more energy on dealing with YC misogyny" (assuming that it even exists)?

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mtrimpe [2]https://interactly.com/company

Thanks for checking out my profile. If you'd dug a bit further you'd have found [1] that I am indeed a transgender [2] bisexual male.

That means that unless I closet myself for YC, which I'm getting a bit old for, I'm likely to have a significantly worse experience than the average woman would.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7098056 [2] Gender-dysphoric to be precise, but that isn't meaningful to most.

Suspicion of impropriety heightens concern, probably due to self-preservation instincts. Someone you don't trust implicitly is more likely to seem suspicious to you if there's a claim of impropriety that can't immediately be explained away by any other currently-available information. When you do implicitly trust someone, much less concern is attributed, even without additional information. This applies uniformly without regard to gender - unless the person viewing the claim is biased towards a particular gender, such as misogynists and misandrists.

It was upvoted because it's weird, there's no simple explanation, and people are concerned.

Because the title was: 'Single, female, non-tech founder with no team...and her first 1 million users' and HN thrives on drama and pointing out things that are inaccurate.

Sorry, when someone writes a presentation or do a talk, he's probably being pushed by something:

1. To get his self-esteem to a higher level. Lots of people do talking for this. And they say lots of bullshit to attract your attention and boost their selves.

2. To genially tell the truth and help people. My guess is that this is the minority.

So I'm always skeptic about these stories.

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