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Gravid Topiary posted:

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I should share startup bro corruption stories. I'm bored and my instant noodles aren't soggy enough.

First story. Relatively known vector database startup. Founder after getting Series B bought a Ferrarri. Had it listed as marketing expense on the balance sheet.

Blew 10k on a party to attract Middle East investors. Underpaid the devs from Vietnam for a quarter to do it.

2nd Story. Indian startup bro in the ML space. After Series A flew his family into SF (company's money) to show off his sucess. Also spent 15k decorating the office for investors.

Didn't have a real product. We were brought in to build a business strategy and product roadmap.

3rd story. American techbro (ex Googler) created a successful startup. Series E. They're doing quite well now.

Over drinks admitted he blew money on escorts. And took it out of company funds. Classified it as entertainment. Also abused Adderall to do 996 development.

Great product. lovely person.

Story 4.
Witnessed an new age healer for a hiring decisions. We had been hired to create out a hiring process, but they were stuck on 3 candidates. So they paid some nutter to make the decision. Healer was paid 350 dollars an hour. She was there for 4.

Billed as consulting services. Founders wanted to have "the right elemental vibe".

Never made it to series. But had investors.

Story 5.

Rich kid started a startup. Zero work experience. Zero idea how to run a business. We got hired to develop it.

After 6 mos we find out the dad got a significant amount of PPP loans for his company. He used some of that to pay for his failsons startup.

We were literally getting paid with our own taxes. Daddy also bought him 30 under 30.

For his seed round funding he was so nervous to present he got himself drunk. We had to stage manage him and his co-founder who was less drunk.

Story 6
Orgies at certain conferences. I'm not saying more than that.

Story 7
The LDS church has startups they support in the data science and AI space. For diversification purposes. A few Presidency of 70 members grandkids get funding, connections, etc.

There's one well known data science founder and consultancies like this.

Story 8
Tel Aviv startups have government backing or have intelligence connections. Same with middle east startups. Especially if you see a military or analyst background for the founder.