They sold 350 scooters at $700 each. So just under $250k in sales. They decided, right before Christmas, that they would tell all those people their $700 has been thrown right in the trash.
The founder of this company is the founder of Tile, a VC-backed company worth $XXX million that has raised $104M+. If this person had any morals he would cash out $250k of his shares in Tile and pay back the people who ordered his scooters. Hell give them half back for $125k. That is chump change to a successful SV founder.
I know that legally he has no obligation, but how can he sleep at night? This wasn't "oh making hardware is way harder than we thought and we couldn't afford it" this was "well I figured if I couldn't sell a million of these I'd rather just give up so I spent all the money on ads".
How do I sleep at night? For the last three weeks I've been waking up at about 2AM every night with anxiety running through my body. My life absolutely sucks right now and it will for a while. I absolutely would pay people back personally if I could. I'm working on a way to get refunds back to people.
Things were not going in the right direction and we started moving forward with a more graceful exit that would have gotten scooters to our current customers, but it fell through and then we reached the point of no return.
Basically my only job right now is to find a way to get returns back to people.
Thank you for sharing your side of the story. I was wrong to attack you so personally on a public forum and I apologize for that. It's too easy sometimes to forget I'm insulting a real person when I'm critical online.
I hope your work pays off and you find a solution.
Legally he does have an obligation. All the commenters suggesting that this behavior does not pierce the corporate veil are wrong (on the internet!) and assuming incorrect legal knowledge may be dangerous for the next founder who reads this thread and thinks their liability is limited when engaging in similar behavior. Selling a product with inadequate capitalization is a common basis for piercing the corporate veil.
Tile was a company that always rubbed me in a weird way, too. They spent an incredible amount of money on marketing, yet I never heard of anyone using them. For years.
The founder of this company is the founder of Tile, a VC-backed company worth $XXX million that has raised $104M+. If this person had any morals he would cash out $250k of his shares in Tile and pay back the people who ordered his scooters. Hell give them half back for $125k. That is chump change to a successful SV founder.
I know that legally he has no obligation, but how can he sleep at night? This wasn't "oh making hardware is way harder than we thought and we couldn't afford it" this was "well I figured if I couldn't sell a million of these I'd rather just give up so I spent all the money on ads".
What a jerk. Merry Christmas from Silicon Valley.