Hey guys, I posted on HN back in August last year asking about meeting potential technical cofounders. After recently moving to San Francisco, I wanted to make a few of the ideas I was thinking about happen. I got a number of emails, including help from HN'er 'mahmud' and eventually partnered with someone. We created a first site www.crushtease.com, which I paid a reasonable sum for 50% equity.<p>Our product didn't initially go viral, and I mentioned another idea to my cofounder, who thought it was interesting as well. We ended up working on this second project (wikizu.com), while shelving the first project for the time being, identifying a few errors to the concept and presentation. I paid for that, plus some sort of marketing campaign that I knew far too little about.<p>This was back in November, right before Thanksgiving. From then until now, I have been asking him about the status of Wikizu and he has given me a variety of excuses. I believed them until a few friends started questioning the situation. Today I confronted him about it and he dodged every question I posed.<p>I suggested he send back the advertising money (which I sent back in November, thinking we were launching very shortly) to prove my friends wrong. He concluded I was being "annoying", said he had work to do, and mentioned contacting a lawyer a few times. I can upload the chat conversation somewhere if anyone wants to read it, but this is pretty much what happened.<p>I understand that I was horribly naive, and blindly trusted what I was told without really understanding what was going on. I sent money to someone I didn't know simply because we had long IM conversations and he seemed to know what he was talking about. He even made the sites functional with facebook, which I thought meant for sure there was no reason to question him.<p>I don't know what to do at this point. I'm out a good chunk of change, but I'm also frustrated that I've spent six months waiting around instead of implementing some of my ideas. I even posted on here earlier today asking about doing another project with someone, since I was tired of waiting around.<p>The alleged scammer posts on HN, and to my knowledge has a minimum of two accounts, one that he has posted as recently as this week on. A google search including his name and "scammer" brings up results, as does one with a pseudonym he uses for various sites. I'm not sure if I should out this information at this time. Any help would be appreciated.
You met someone on the internet. You sent them money. Presumably, you have no contract (at least you didn't mention it). The person who has your money isn't doing what you want. You've realized doing this was amazingly stupid.<p>Consider the money you've spent and the time you've wasted extra credit for your "how to do business" degree. Seriously, you should know better. If you want to start and build a company stop looking for people to implement your ideas and go find a true collaborator. Find someone you can sit down with over coffee and look in the eye. Find someone that shares your vision and complements your skills. Don't just be the "guy with an idea and money" because those guys get taken by slime balls like this. Be the guy that recruits a team, manages the business, forms the company, drives the team, finds early customers, gets the logo designed for nothing by hustling hard--the guy that does everything else. This guy is useful to coders. IMO, your money and your ideas are worthless to people with good intentions. You have to bring more to the table than that. The good news is "all the other stuff" requires only that you have a brain and work really hard to make things happen.<p>Don't waste another moment worrying about this. Drop it. Move on. Spend your time and energy on creating something positive and always remember why this happened.<p>Assholes are everywhere. Starting a business is risky and hard. The ONLY risk you can conceivably reduce (never eliminate) is the interpersonal risk between you and the people you choose to spend your countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears with.
Hi there, you mention my name, even though I just gave you free help, but you withhold the name of the person who scammed you? Not cool man.<p>If you know this person is a known scammer and has minimum of two accounts, as you said, PLEASE OUT HIM. Sheesh.
At the risk of adding to the intrigue here, I think it's best if this community knows that there might be someone unsaviory amongst us. It is jiganti's perogative whether or not to out the person responsible for this. However, nothing stops a bit of detective work.<p>Whois on both wikizu.com and crushtease.com reveal:<p><pre><code> Registrant:
Sink Float
P.O. Box 820
Beijing, Beijing 100837
China
Administrative Contact:
Float, Sink sinkyfloaty@gmail.com
P.O. Box 820
Beijing, Beijing 100837
China
+20.13352074153 Fax --
</code></pre>
A few tests of user profile pages shows us there is a user here named 'sinkfloat'. Strange, but not conclusive by any means. Another search using searchyc.com using 'sink float' reveals another user, 'pinksoda' making some outrageous claims about sites he/she has built [1] [2]. Also, a link to a new business they started, www.sinkfloat.com [3]. Ok, now we're getting somewhere. Whois on sinkfloat.com reveals the same contact information as wikizu.com and crushtease.com.<p>Knowing that jiganti mentioned this user has at least two handles here, a lot of evidence points that pinksoda and sinkfloat are one in the same and likely the person jiganti partnered with on this venture.<p>[1]: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299723" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299723</a><p>[2]: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299094" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299094</a><p>[3]: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1269276" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1269276</a><p>Conclusive? Maybe not. Certainly enough, IMO, to make anyone thinking of doing business with pinksoda or sinkfloat think twice. Unsavory business practices, scammers, etc are not welcome here, as far as I'm concerned. I welcome pinksoda and/or sinkfloat to chime in here if this analysis is wrong. If so, I apologize.
This reminds me a little about about what happened with Mark Zuckerberg and the Winklevoss twins. Communication was cut off for a while and many excuses were made. However, if it makes you feel better, the twins now have a $150 million stake in Facebook. [1]<p>Anyways, I'm not sure if I have much advice. First thing should definitely be hiring a lawyer, though. You should probably refrain from posting anymore information here on HN as well. I've seen you've already removed some, which is good. We only need to hear the gist of the situation (for future reference).<p>Hope everything turns out well!<p><pre><code> -
</code></pre>
[Added in edit]<p>I traced back to when you were first starting this project. One of the people commented and wrote:<p><pre><code> I see these types of posts and it astonishes me that people will look for
cofounders "on the street."
I can't imagine that [ increases the odds of being successful -- but maybe I'm
wrong. Employee number 5 can be an unknown quantity,
but employee number 2? That would terrify me. [2]
</code></pre>
This should be a warning to everybody else.<p>[1] - <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/04/businessinsider-the-winklevoss-twins-stake-in-facebook-is-now-worth-150-million-2011-1.DTL" rel="nofollow">http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/04/...</a><p>[2] - <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1625890" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1625890</a>
I don't think I follow the whole story. What exactly did you pay for? Did you pay him for his time, because when you say "I paid for that, plus some sort of marketing campaign..." I wonder what <i>that</i> is. If you paid for advertising, who got the contract? Is there no invoice?<p>Are you sure the terms were clear? If the other party kept the money in exchange for his efforts--and that seems likely--then I don't think there's a lot too this.<p>If the money was for an advertising campaign, I'm not sure why you feel that you're owed the money. What you're doing comes with risk of failure.<p>Perhaps I missed something in there. I think it's awfully aggressive to make public accusations of wrongdoing without explaining the arrangements that were made.<p>----<p>I re-read your account, just to make sure I didn't miss the point, and I pretty sure I did not. This really sounds like you offered money for a stake in something that didn't take off, and you admit that you were not diligent in entering into this deal. That's the game. I suppose it's up to how your contract is written.
It appears like I was unclear. Mahmud had nothing to do with this, and in fact was the one who gave me unconditional help in the early stages. I apologize for the misunderstanding.
<i>A google search including his name and "scammer" brings up results, as does one with a pseudonym he uses for various sites.</i><p>This is pretty weak evidence. Google searches for "Colin Percival" +scammer and cperciva +scammer find a few dozen results too.
What to do now? Send a stern email explaining the situation: you think he's ripping you off, if he can't produce evidence of a product being worked on <i>or</i> provide an explanation of where the money is, request the money back, if he can't provide that then I'd suggest contacting a lawyer (got any contracts?). If he can't explain where the money is, show a product <i>or</i> return the money, in that situation I'd suggest lawyering up.<p>It's possible he got sidetracked, or it was more work than expected, but money given as "marketing budget" for a product that he can't show exists should not have gone anywhere. If it was wages, or a fee for the work then sure he could explain it away, but marketing money? Having been in this situation on the other side, in my case I got extremely busy with work that was paying me directly and didn't have time for the side-project work, but I didn't take any money intended for post-launch and spend it in the interim... that crosses the line from slow/lazy to wilfully ripping someone off.<p>If he had spent the money to keep himself afloat while he worked with money coming in from other means later on that he intended to pay you back with (or sneak back into the marketing money without you knowing) that could explain it, but if there is no product to show that can't be the reason.<p>tl:dr; if he took money, can't account for the spending and refuses to show a product (eg: it doesn't exist) lawyer up.
<i>He even made the sites functional with facebook, which I thought meant for sure there was no reason to question him.</i><p>Why does adding a FBConnect button make him more trustworthy? I see several things wrong with this sentence.
I'm sorry about the situation you are in, but it is largely your fault.<p>Did you do any reference checks on previous work before you partnered with him? Did you meet up in person to validate his personality? Did you google him after speaking to him the first time?<p>The internet is rife with <i>scammers</i>, but in this case you DID actually receive two sites - albeit not extremely well built ones. Scammers would have generally taken your money and produced nothing at all.<p>just my 2cents...
If you truly believe the idea has some merit then you should launch it. Looking at wikizu, it does not seem as if he is very far in development.<p>Unless you are out lots of money, you should let it be because lawyers cost money and time.