[pavlov]

The weirdest tech story in Finland right now.

The founders have sketchy track records. They do a carefully managed social media build-up. There are credible rumors that they’ve been simultaneously raising money by cold-calling moderately wealthy people around the country. (Finland has extremely little oversight for private fundraising; you can basically sell shares in your zero-revenue startup to grandma next door — as long as you’re careful about wording your claims as “projections”.)

So lots of red flags. Everyone would love it to be real of course because it’s been a long since Finland’s tech scene had a global hit like Nokia and Supercell… And perhaps the Donut founders are counting on that mood.

[doikor]

The electric motorbike company (Verge Motorcycles) owned by the same people also has such bad accounting/paperwork that they could not find an auditor willing to give an opinion.

https://yle.fi/a/74-20205916 (article in Finnish)

"According to the auditor's report, no opinion was given on the company's financial statements because sufficient audit evidence was not available."

The company claims to have a couple million in inventory but no system saying anything about what is in their inventory, 300k in revenue in Finland without any papertrail of it actually happening, 2.5 million in R&D without any explanation/papertrail on what it was spent on (salaries? materials? machines?), etc.

Also the company has taken really expensive loans from family members of the leadership (12% interest which is way over the market rate).

[idontwantthis]

But the motorcycles do exist and use these batteries don’t they?

Has no one bought one and torn it open yet?

[stetrain]

They said "Available Today" on January 4th but have said actually customer deliveries are planned for April.

> “The first customer deliveries will probably take place in April. There are production-related issues, getting subcontractors involved. Starting production. A lot depends on the goods and officials.”

Translated from: https://web.archive.org/web/20260204130446/https://www.kaupp...

[Hamuko]

As far as I can tell, no solid-state TS Pro (the TS Pro itself is not an entirely new model and has been around for a couple of years) has been delivered to any customers yet. They're supposed to be delivered in Q1/26, so it shouldn't be too long if they intend to keep their promises. Although if you were to order one today, your bike wouldn't arrive until Q4/26 according to their website.

[idontwantthis]

That will be the only thing to actually watch then. If they keep pushing that out then we will know it's a scam.

[hipsdontlie]

It's disappointing that this merry band of serial scammers are tarnishing Finland's reputation.

[jusssi]

It's also a bit sus that someone creates an account just to bash them, when they themselves are already doing a great job to make it look like a scam.

[mrtksn]

Can you plase give more information about the scams(not opinions about scam but actual scams where he was exposed) this guy committed?

[karmakurtisaani]

Who has the burden of proof here?

This is absolutely a scam.

[mrtksn]

Obviously those who claim to be a scam have the burden of proof. Guilty until proven innocent is not a thing, it’s the other way around.

[szmarczak]

You have no idea how scams work, do you? Visit this website [1] by the CEO and tell me it's not a scam. Tell me there exists some magical algorithm, where I give you my money and you promise me to 2x it and give it back. Please do tell me that.

[1] https://www.definancetechnologies.com/

[mrtksn]

I don’t think you understand how startups work.

In startups 2x isn’t enough, you usually expect 100x or 1000x returns. That’s the main idea behind investing: You give your money to someone who may have better use of it so you may get it back multiple but may also lose it.

As for the website you linked it appears to be promoting a trading bot and I don’t see any promise of guaranteed 2x returns, which would have been a scam. Maybe I missed it, can you point it out?

[karmakurtisaani]

I have this bridge.. it's for sale, interested?