WrkRiot Collapses Amongst Allegations of Fraud (qz.com)

HockeyPuck quotes a report from New York Times: This week, WrkRiot, began unraveling in a highly public fashion (Warning: may be paywalled). Its former head of marketing revealed that the start-up had been mired in internal chaos and had sometimes paid employees in cashier's checks before delaying payment... Penny Kim, the former marketing director at WrkRiot, wrote about her experience at the company -- a story that consists of alleged deceptions, including forged wire transfer receipts, late paychecks, and lies from executives. Her entire story can be found in a Medium post titled "I Got Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup." Quartz reports: "Here's the story Kim lays out in her Medium post: In May 2016, after three interviews, she says she accepted the role of marketing director at 1for.one, one of WrkRiot's earlier incarnations. From the beginning, things didn't seem quite right, she says. The CEO, Isaac Choi, hired one of her direct reports without consulting her. A promised $4 million marketing budget never materialized. At investor meetings, the co-founders 'talked about themselves, their connections, and their qualifications for 30 minutes' rather than the product, which they touted as the next 'Credit Karma of LinkedIn.' The software engineering team was largely made up of young Chinese employees relying on visas sponsored by the company to remain in the U.S., Kim says. After repeated inquiring about salaries, Kim alleges, Choi sent forged Wells Fargo wire transfer receipts to 17 employees, and told them that if the money wasn't in their accounts that it was their responsibility to follow up with their banks. Kim ended up filing wage claims with the state of California as the paychecks stopped coming. Kim claims Choi fired her without cause and owes her back wages, a promised $10,000 relocation bonus, and three months of severance worth $50,000, as negotiated in her contract. A series of former employees, advisors, and even the company's former CTO have since denounced WrkRiot and its leadership, in particular Choi."

Comments

A *Minimum* of Journalistic Skill

[RobotRunAmok]

...that's all anybody is really expecting. Like, one sentence, a parenthetical phrase, even, describing WTF WrkRiot is, what they make, something, anything, in the first paragraph of the summary to make me care about this. We get a "Credit Karma of LinkedIn" buried somewhere in the middle, which -- fascinating-ly -- is actually LESS than descriptive or useful.

Slashdot, I love you guys, but most days you make it really, really tough...

Re:A *Minimum* of Journalistic Skill

[alvinrod]

From the sounds of things, the company itself didn't really have a clue what they made either. Being the "Credit Karma of LinkedIn" makes it sound like they were dealing in fertilizer if anything.

Re:A *Minimum* of Journalistic Skill

[queazocotal]

Relevant xkcd is relevant. https://xkcd.com/1060/

Fucked Company 2.0

[0100010001010011]

We need a new FuckedCompany for this bubble. That was always some good reading.

Startups are mostly garbage, news at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

For every legit startup, there are 9 others that are garbage. That ratio is being generous.

Re:Startups are mostly garbage, news at 11

[Darinbob]

I have to agree. I know people who actively want to work at startups, despite having been through all the troubles at previous ones, and I can only conclude that they have brain damage. Now if you get the salary, then that's ok. Get the salary FIRST, get the benefits second, and only then accept the worthless stock options.

Re:Startups are mostly garbage, news at 11

[Darinbob]

Most startups I've seen have really awful workers; no real experience in creating a real product that actually makes it to market. I've worked at a few places that had been startups or were pre-IPO but out of the startup phase, and most of the existing code bases were rotten and the hardware was rushed together. So the work generally involves throwing out as much of the startup stuff as you can get away with and starting over with something that actually works, and when you have to keep the original stuff then you always have a new "you won't believe how stupid..." story for your friends.

The thing is, people at startups most often have no actual desire to get to market, some of these companies have a plan to get bought out by someone else. When they do want to make an actual product the primary goal is still to RUSH as fast as you can before funding runs out or the investors get bored; rush to get a mockup, rush to get a demo, rush to add a prospective customer's favorite feature, rush to change the entire focus of the company, and get all that rushing done by Friday or there's no job left on Monday. There is zero incentive to have quality, quality is a hindrance that only slows down the rush. Stopping and thinking can only be done on your own time, and startups insist that you have no time of your own anyway.

There's a LOT of ground in between no-nothing startup and a megacorp though, plenty of places outside of startups where you can make a difference and be important and actually have a product make it to customers.

If you're making 200K less, then you're a manager and not a real worker anyway, or an exec and even less able to do real work.

Re:Startups are mostly garbage, news at 11

[Darinbob]

The payday though is most often disappointing. Unless you've got a relatively simple product that's up and out to the public in a year and the bankers are excited and want to push you to IPO, there's generally a dilution of equity over time. So five or ten years at a startup and your payday is basically the size of a large bonus or a year's salary (which is great but it's not the quick retirement some people think they're going to have). If you take time to build a business instead of hoping for a quicky buy from Google then that time means equity dilutes. Bankers are getting smarter, they are much more likely now to want to see actual recurring revenue before the agree to help with the IPO, so it takes time and you need a real plan.

There's no easy way to make sure those options don't get taken away. Even co-founders can find themselves cut out of the picture with just one vote on the board, so what chance does someone who actually was low class enough to actually have to interview for the job expect?

Re:Startups are mostly garbage, news at 11

[coofercat]

I'd agree - the startups I've worked for weren't necessarily going for a buy-out, although that'd have kept the VCs happy. Along the way though, we got to play with some cool tech, got some (potential) customer interaction experience, occasionally flew a few places, got some 'everything's broken, you're the only one here, so make it work' type experience and drank a boatload of beer at various places when the bosses got their credit cards out. Of course, when the company went down the pan, we all got left with nothing, but it wasn't a surprise so we all had a 'plan b' lined up.

I wouldn't go for that now as I like the 9-5 so I can be at the right places at the right times for my kids. But back when I was (mostly) single, it was great fun, and rewarded me in a lot more ways than a regular salary.

Just as a side note, one startup I was at really did try to go for quality. We still had to move too fast quite a bit towards the end, but the foundations were pretty solid. All that means nothing now, because the product is long lost in some vault somewhere and provides no benefit to the customers we (nearly) had, or indeed the world as a whole. The question is, was all that quality worth it?

What Employee Works Without Pay?

[hondo77]

Why do people stay at a company if it has missed a payday? The day my employer misses a payday, I go home and don't come back until they come up with a paycheck (if at all, since while I'm home I look for another job immediately). Do people stay out of loyalty or naiveté or what?

Re:What Employee Works Without Pay?

[queazocotal]

Well, if you are required to work at the company to stay in the country...

Re:What Employee Works Without Pay?

[yarbo]

She moved to California for this job. There's a certain amount of sunk costs involved in moving that makes the calculus a little trickier than just move back to Texas over a missed paycheck.

Hindsight shows that it was a bad move, but there are counterexamples of people who have gotten their paychecks a little bit late and had a satisfying time at their company.

Re:What Employee Works Without Pay?

[ShanghaiBill]

That's the real question, how the fuck did a small startup get a bunch of work visas?

By applying for them. I worked for a 10 person startup a decade ago, and 3 of the employees were H1Bs. They were highly educated, experienced, and already worked for us from overseas, but we wanted to all be in one place. There was a bit of paperwork, and some delay, but the process was straightforward.

Re:What Employee Works Without Pay?

[hawguy]

Well, if you are required to work at the company to stay in the country...

Not sure if you are being serious, but: if your company isn't paying you, then you are already in violation of your H1 visa.

Which is all the more reason to stay when the money they owe you is right around the corner, just need to wait for that wire transfer to come through, any day now.

Re:What Employee Works Without Pay?

[hawguy]

Why do people stay at a company if it has missed a payday? The day my employer misses a payday, I go home and don't come back until they come up with a paycheck (if at all, since while I'm home I look for another job immediately). Do people stay out of loyalty or naiveté or what?

Because they realize that working at a startup takes a certain amount of sacrifice, I stayed at a startup when they couldn't make payroll for 3 weeks, they admitted it beforehand, and told us that we were free to take unpaid leave during that period if we wanted to, or we could work and eventually get paid. The CEO offered personal loans with his own money to anyone that had rent, mortgage or other obligation coming up. Most of the employees continued working, we got paid in 3 weeks as promised with a 25% bonus. Those that took the unpaid leave came back and returned to their jobs.

Even in a hot job market like Silicon Valley, it takes more than a few weeks to line up a *good* job, so it's worth taking a bit of risk if you're otherwise happy with the company and the product you're working on.

Re:A story as old as the hills.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're missing the part where the startup illegally forges fake salary payments in order to extract even more work without paying their employees.

I don't understand why you haven't been modded as a troll. You're made up a side to the story in order to discredit the speaker. No where does she talk about planning to make massive wealth. She didn't even name the company, other people looked into it and uncovered the company.

Editors: DO YOUR FUCKING JOB

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus. Getting pretty sick of this shit. Tell us what WrkRiot is. What is it? Why should I care?

You fucking idiots.

Re:Editors: DO YOUR FUCKING JOB

[serviscope_minor]

They're the Credit Karma of Linked in, duh.

No I have no idea what the hell that is either.

Re:Editors: DO YOUR FUCKING JOB

[naughtynaughty]

https://www.crunchbase.com/org...
Total Equity Funding
$1.13M in 2 Rounds from 2 Investors
Most Recent Funding
$130k Seed on August 1, 2016
Headquarters:
Santa Clara, California
Description:
Taking the search out of job search with a patent pending customized platform utilizing NLP and Machine Learning.
Founders:
Isaac Choi
Categories:
Employment, SaaS, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Text Analytics
Website:
http://wrkriot.om/

Company Details
Founded:
November 1, 2015
Aliases:
JobSonic
Employees:
11 - 50 | 1 in CrunchBase
JobSonic is currently trying to make sure that job search engines cater to the needs of the job seekers by allowing them to be matched and ranked to all job postings in real-time. We have created a data driven job board using the latest technologies in natural language processing, text analytics and machine learning. Our goal is to make sure that all the people in the world will have an opportunity to work in a full time job positions and are able to get all the benefits needed to live without any worries concerning their health and retirement.
Everyone deserves the right to work, provide, save and grow for their family. Everybody should be allowed the right to better themselves and in this current economic downfall people are being pushed into working for the on-demand market, which is actually suppressing people.
We do this by allowing a person's resumes to be matched through signal classifications to every job posting on the web within their desired industries, salaries and locations in real time. Not only are their resumes matched, but the job postings will be ranked in order from the highest possible choices to the lowest.

Re:Never Heard Of Them

[bengoerz]

Her breakup story just made the New York Times, Slashdot, TechCrunch, and Inc.com. Seems like she's a pretty great Marketer.