The hosts dive into the surge of fraud in venture capital, linking it to current market conditions. They discuss the OpenSea executive scandal over insider trading in NFTs and explore a bizarre impersonation case in a media company during a vital pitch. The conversation also highlights a major settlement involving App Annie for securities fraud, raising questions about accountability in the tech and financial sectors. Overall, the discussion connects the dots between ethics, transparency, and the growing pressures within the startup ecosystem.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
OpenSea Insider Trading
An OpenSea executive bought NFTs he knew would be featured on the homepage.
This insider trading incident damaged OpenSea's reputation and user trust.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Ozy Media's Deception
Ozy Media's co-founder impersonated a YouTube executive during a fundraising meeting with Goldman Sachs.
This fraudulent act, involving voice modulation, raises serious ethical questions.
question_answer ANECDOTE
App Annie's Data Misuse
App Annie misused customer data to improve their market predictions, which they sold to trading firms.
This led to a $10 million SEC settlement for securities fraud, damaging user trust.
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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We got the crew together — Natasha and Danny and Alex — this time 'round to talk fraud, one of our favorite topics. Sure, we've riffed on the ups and downs at Luckin, and we've spent more time talking about WeWork's implosion than we want to admit. But that's not the most recent stuff. There's been a raft of fraud lately which caught our eye. The heart of today's episode is a question about fraud, and what more of it might mean: Does more fraud indicate that we're in a growing bubble, or that we're in the later-stages of a bubble about to burst?
Here's what we got into to help us understand our question:
Turning to historical examples, we also brought up Nikola and Luckin and Theranos to help us draw a line around what its fraud, and what is not.
With definitions out of the way, we ended this episode by trying to answer our complex, core question. We won't spoil the eventual conclusion, but here's a hint: checks are flying fast into startups with minimal due diligence, and it looks like there's much more money is coming.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Equity