SoftBank sues former IRL CEO Abraham Shafi for fraud after investing $150M in IRL in 2021 on user metrics claims; IRL allegedly paid to fill the site with bots
SoftBank sued former IRL CEO Abraham Shafi and five siblings and cousins for allegedly misleading the investor about the messaging app's growth …
The Information Amir Efrati
Related Coverage
- SoftBank sues social app IRL for fraud, seeks $150 million in damages The Economic Times
- SoftBank Alleges $150 Million Loss on IRL App Collapse Bloomberg Law · Martina Barash
- SoftBank sues IRL over ‘elaborate scheme’ that swallowed $150M TechCrunch · Amanda Silberling
- SoftBank sues social media startup it invested in, alleging it faked user numbers CNBC · Rohan Goswami
- Another consequence of the end of zero interest rates is finding out how many supposedly sophisticated investors gave hundreds of millions of dollars to founders who had nothing backing their businesses besides fraud. — There was a time Theranos was a unique story. Now we have IRL, Frank, FTX, Ozy Media, Headspin, etc. … @carnage4life@mas.to · Dare Obasanjo
- SoftBank Sues Former IRL CEO For Fraud Slashdot · Msmash
Discussion
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@eringriffith
Erin Griffith
on x
Employees literally creating Jira tickets to “Add Fake Users & Fake Chats” to the platform. [image]
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@eringriffith
Erin Griffith
on x
The conflict in these cases (like theranos, ftx, headspin and others) comes down to diligence. How did supposedly sophisticated investors get duped? Here Softbank says it commissioned a third party report that showed IRL had only been downloaded 9m times... [image]
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@johnsonthought1
@johnsonthought1
on x
This is what an intelligence operation looks like. Don't look too close!
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@eringriffith
Erin Griffith
on x
Crazy lawsuit from an investor - Softbank - against a startup - IRL. Softbank invested $150m in 2021 ($25m went to insiders) on the claim that IRL had 12m monthly users. But the company was spending 50k a month on a bot army and the app was “a virtual ghost town.” [image]
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@chetomanji
Manji Cheto
on x
How many more of these kinds of stories of startups making fictitious claims about their growth & investors ‘rewarding’ them w/ funds need to happen before we all agree to have more honest conversations about start ups' growth performance?
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@zachweinberg
@zachweinberg
on x
All you had to do to diligence IRL was to try to meet some users IRL and IRL you would have learned that there were no IRL users.
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@pt
Parker
on x
What's next, are we gonna learn nobody uses Triller either?
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@conordougherty
Conor Dougherty
on x
@eringriffith Their response should be that the IRL was ironic.
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@peggymangot
Peggy Mangot
on x
Is this real? I remember when this funding happened and I didn't know anyone that used IRL
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@elonmusk
Elon Musk
on x
@eringriffith Wow