[johnwheeler]

This article is damage control for the author's naiveté.

The problem: Reframed did the due diligence after talking to Simon and seeking additional investment.

It's also not clear if Reframed ever provided any real value, but it's clear they we're willing to take real money and assign themselves a $4M valuation. That might not be a sham straightaway, but it's probably one in the making--good intentions aside.

Your investors will rightfully blame you if you get them scammed. You're expected to be competent enough to protect them because that's part of your job as "The Management".

Thank goodness the deal stopped dead in its tracks before more people got hurt.

[WhitneyLand]

Totally disagree that this is "damage control". It had all the signs of a good faith postmortem that others can learn from.

[johnwheeler]

I do think the author told himself he was writing it in good faith, but it was hard for me to see where he took direct responsibility for the outcome.

I read it as more blame-shifting to Simon, and since this Simon character doesn't have a voice in this, we can't see the whole picture.

[gwbas1c]

Honestly, the story doesn't add up. Unless I misinterpreted the article, the Simon Incident happened so fast that there's no way that the company had more than a few weeks of operational budget in the bank when it started working with Simon.

What I learned when I tried to run a startup is that some people just live in their imaginations when they try to run a business. It's easy in software, because, in a way, software is living in one's imagination.

I think the company was more desperate than the article lets on.

[kev-reframed]

Hi, We have taken responsibility for what went on. Simon was not the cause of the downfall of the business. The fact that we could not monetise and didn't have a commercial business was not his fault. We have said that to each of our investors in person. We have still maintained a good relationship with all of them and they were involved in our board meetings around this (as they have all of our board meetings) right the way through the business.

The reason I wrote the article is not to say I didn't do anything wrong - obviously we were terribly naive in many aspects of the business and far too trusting. I didn't expect this many people to read it, I thought my friends would read it locally and be forewarned about getting involved (I only posted it on facebook to my friends). Turns out it got more attention

[johnwheeler]

I can definitely appreciate the article being taken out of context by an unintended audience who doesn't know anything about you. Your friends know you better than we do.

[Disruptive_Dave]

This was not a post written as "We were naive and unprepared and suffered the consequences" but rather "look at all these bad things this bad man did to us, the victims, and oh yeah maybe we could have done something better at some point."

[GrinningFool]

> Since then we’ve been making sure that we could dissolve the company solvently by covering the debt personally.

Actions louder than words, etc. After reading this, there's no question that they're shifting a lot of the blame to Simon, but to me this action also shows they're aware of their own culpability in allowing it to get to that point.

[Disruptive_Dave]

No doubt they've learned a damn good lesson that they'll probably only need to learn once.