A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:10:16 · Pablo Srugo, Jack Kuveke
[00:10:16] S1: Except at Jabi Capital. I'm sure you've already employed him. [00:10:19] S0: Oh yeah. No, I, but I will , I will say if he wants to like get a , a sex change or facial operation and then I can start planting it at my competitors, I'm obviously down for that. I'm gonna get 'em planted at Mistral . That's, that's, I'm gonna just start planting him at all. Like, he's gonna get like 15 jobs. [00:10:34] S1: He's got a unique skillset , I'll tell you that. So, and then they get found out because the rippling CEO put in some trap, like basically set something that would then get stolen and then figured out which employee was stealing it by like the actions that followed something like that. [00:10:50] S0: Yeah, that's the best part. He , he put like a document that says, if you read this, you'll make a billion dollars and into a Slack channel. And the guy's like, oh, this is definitely real or legit. And then <laugh> open it like 480 times in the span of 24 hours [00:11:05] S1: <laugh>.
00:11:05 · Pablo Srugo, Jack Kuveke
[00:11:05] S1: <laugh>. [00:11:06] S0: He's like, I just imagine him going in like screenshotting every line from the document and like shipping it and like DMing the deal, CEO on Twitter. And the best part, my favorite thing of this story is the deal, CEO then just fled to Dubai. He did the ultimate move, which was like, now <laugh> , did you not see , this is my favorite day . I didn't see that his, his lawyer and him just went to Dubai. So they're in like a hot tub in a mega highrise in Dubai in 110 degree weather. Just getting like, just messages from Ripplings legal team, like a court, a federal judge is like hitting them up, being like, Hey, where are you? We're trying to depose you next Tuesday. And he's just listening to like, dubstep on a rooftop, which is very funny. [00:11:48] S1: See, this stuff was supposed to be Wall Street stuff, you know, Bernie Madoff, like that's where these guys come from. But now we've got SBF, now we've got spies. You know what I mean? Like Silicon Valley tech is, is getting, I mean , cool is the wrong word. I know it's the wrong word, but it's, you know, it's getting , uh, different levels of depth. Let's, let's put it that way. That's a huge , yeah.
00:11:48 · Pablo Srugo, Jack Kuveke
[00:11:48] S1: See, this stuff was supposed to be Wall Street stuff, you know, Bernie Madoff, like that's where these guys come from. But now we've got SBF, now we've got spies. You know what I mean? Like Silicon Valley tech is, is getting, I mean , cool is the wrong word. I know it's the wrong word, but it's, you know, it's getting , uh, different levels of depth. Let's, let's put it that way. That's a huge , yeah. [00:12:05] S0: I mean, listen, dude, finance wasn't cool. Then finance became cool and then people started scamming People in finance tax , just finance, you don't make as much money in it. Now. There's like the , the , the, the companies themselves are making more money than ever, but the, the people on the ground floor, the employees and like the, the small shops are just not making nearly as much. All that money's flown into tech . So it's, that's the space for the scam artists now. I mean , that's what we, which makes our lives much more entertaining. I feel lucky. Well, [00:12:32] S1: There's a lot going on, I'll say that. And then a 16 comes into this story somehow. 'cause now they're like, they have to back Deel because they're backers of Deel. And so they've gotten somehow, you know, they're on, on the side of the spy, which is a weird place for , uh, a a 16 to find themselves. Yeah. [00:12:49] S0: Be like, listen, so what they were doing, corporate espionage, big deal. Did you ever read Paul Graham's article that says, do things that don't scale? They were just doing a couple things that didn't scale. So be it. All
00:12:49 · Jack Kuveke, Pablo Srugo
[00:12:49] S0: Be like, listen, so what they were doing, corporate espionage, big deal. Did you ever read Paul Graham's article that says, do things that don't scale? They were just doing a couple things that didn't scale. So be it. All [00:13:03] S1: Right , that's one . The next one, 11 x see another like, this is what I'm saying, like, there's a lot of fraud going on, or whatever you wanna call it. Scamming going on, right? You've got, people would say, Adam Neumann was a bit of a scam artist in WeWork. That's up for debate. Certainly people are now saying there's a scam going on with this buy deal. And then there's this whole 11 x thing going on. 11 x super hot company , um, raised a bunch of money really quick, grew really fast, but maybe it was all fake. Like what's , uh, what's going on there? A 16 and benchmark back, by the way. So a 16 is , uh, in a lot of places,
00:13:37 · Jack Kuveke
[00:13:37] S0: Bro, they couldn't possibly be doing anything wrong. a16z gave them money. My favorite thing about this story , so TechCrunch puts out the article and says, Hey , uh, 11 x has been lying about their customer growth, this hyper fast growth AI company doesn't have the numbers that they say they do. But then the best part is that both, I think Ben Horowitz and the CEO of 11 X immediately came out the next day and was like, this article's a flat out lie. So I, so the but the fun thing about this, and at first I was like, I don't know what to believe. But then there's been a bunch of articles that have come out from TechCrunch recently, which is supposed to be like, you know, the New York Times of the tech industry. That was what, like they were historically 10 years ago. But now it's become basically like the Daily Mail or like the New York Post where they're just putting out like, like just hit pieces that are completely fabricate, fabricated. I saw a tweet from the c the old, the , the founder of TechCrunch literally tweeted, I'm, I'm deeply sorry for what TechCrunch has become because I think TechCrunch is just hiring a bunch of like woke nerds who could never build their own companies. And these people are just writing articles that are just slam pieces with no research and , and like, like due diligence done into them . But being like 11 x is lying about customers, it looks like 11 x is not even lying about customers <laugh>. Which, which is awesome because I immediately reported on it and said that they were, which I write, you know, satire and I ship post . So it turns out I was lying to everyone, which I, it does actually kind of make me happy. But it wasn't intentional. It was that tech crunches just made it up like some chick with blue hair is like, nah , they're not growing fast. And then these guys come out and just like immediately post screenshots that are like, what are you talking about? You're lying. And I don't think TechCrunch has done anything about it, changed the story like <crosstalk> , but there were
00:15:25 · Pablo Srugo, Jack Kuveke
[00:15:25] S1: Specific claims they're saying like, oh, there's logos on there. We reach out to the companies and they're like, no, they're not supposed to have my logo on there. Like they, they're making a lot of claims. Yeah. And [00:15:33] S0: I think like those, they came out and were like, yeah, some of the logos on there are from past clients that no longer renewed. Maybe we should have closed those, but look at the revenue hit we have. Yeah. There's [00:15:42] S1: A big difference between that. And we lied about revenue. Yeah, sure. Yeah, [00:15:44] S0: Yeah, exactly. It's like, just because like people are that did use your co your , your product are no longer using it are on the website. Okay, maybe that's an oversight from your like three people on your web dev team that manage your website. But like to say that they're just full out lying about their customers , uh, without evidence that that's what they're going off of. I mean, I , it , it's like, it's the same thing that happened in regular media where they take like one nugget that's like not perfect and then they spin a whole story about how like someone's the devil or like, you know, is, you know, is a neo-Nazi or whatever. And then none of it turns out to be true. So [00:16:20] S1: As far as we know, 11 X is a legitimate company with legitimately fast growing revenue. That's what we're saying. [00:16:25] S0: Well, I should say they sponsored 15 of my newsletters, so I actually don't know that I'm just, they're paying me <laugh>.