Unethical things by startup founders

1. hiring very expensive law firms with kick back.  2. Buying the office space and then hiking the rent to the office around 5x and made money. 3. Fake invoices 4. hiring friends companies for consulting 5. setting up shell companies for hiring 6. Buying Forbes 30 under 30 slots with VC money Make this list more exhaustive. I want to say to these founders : bhai kisko chutiya bana rahe ho... And after all this, they have galls to become Gyan chodeswar on LinkedIn, podcasts etc.

I was speaking to an ex-colleague and he mentioned how my previous employer, a lending startup, has been intentionally over-reporting disbursal numbers and under-reporting delinquencies in portfolio. They conveniently chuck the NBFC partners who dare to ask questions and instead catch new fish. During my time I saw sales staff committing rampant frauds and making money on the sides from users. The founders conveniently turned a blind eye till there was new business coming in. They've seemingly moved on to the next level now. The founders have top pedigree and already come from well off families. Makes me wonder how many such skeletons are buried across startups and what leads to such behaviour. Especially in the wake of what we saw with GoMechanic, Zilingo etc.

Has anyone worked with this startup? Heard it's air pollution product doesn't work but it passed IIT tests. My brothers' salaries are not paid, and their founder is more interested in discipline and OKR vs. sales. He pays nepo kids and yes men high salaries apparently. Why are startups screwed up like this. Vcs have invested in.them.and it.is against their interst to.take up these issues despite such narcissistic idiotic founders getting VC importance

I am so frustrated by observing how some Indian startup founders have been mistreating employees. This is happening literally in all the startups and corporates. Many of us invest their precious time and money obtaining degrees, only to become corporate employees. India won the WC on Saturday night, and since then, I have seen numerous rant posts from people complaining that they missed this moment because they were overworked. The rate of employee exploitation is alarmingly high, as founders often believe they have alot of options and are driven by their greed for money. Look at the plight of startups, the top management says they do not have money so they lay off the whole departments without any prior notice. Yet they spend so lavishly on showing investors or on their socials how cool they all are. We are bloody engineers, not their family bound slaves. Why do we suffer ? I believe it is high time that we establish a union for employees working in the IT industry. This exploitative culture needs to come to an end.

Be it about investors, co-founders, hires, freelancers, family, or yourself

I work as a Product manager at a series A well funded startup. This company is run by a solo founder/CEO. This is a wannabe tech and product startup that does not care about their product at all. The internal review meetings get 5 minutes on product and 55 minutes on business and operations on a good day! All they care about is how to run operations and tech just works on automation instead of building the product for the end user. Every OKR cycle runs for two months where OKRs are set for product but we end up building internal tools because things get "re-prioritised" and operations "can not miss targets". The worst part is that the strategy changes every 2 months and every week, the CEO keeps adding new "wants". Almost like a baby seeing shiny new toys. At this stage, the product has become a mess with no identity at all! This baby always says "But is that even do-able" acts critical and tries to seem smart in front of their employees while lying to the investors and board every other week that we are a tech and product company. I don't know if this happens at other startups in India. Would love to hear what y'all have experienced.

Hey Viners, do you think Startups should provide the details of their financial health to new employees so as for employees to know where they stand ??? Many startups, no financial transparency, founders who say we have enough runway, all bs and in the end laying off people, reducing benefits. Doing secondaries for founders and making big money and running away

I know sometimes we refrain from saying too much about our company. But exes can usually be talked about, since there's not much holding back. Maybe it helps someone else avoid a mistake you did, or gain a new learning :p Shoot.