An internal investigation by IRL's board of directors found that 95% of the app's reported 20 million users were "automated or from bots."

An internal investigation by IRL’s board of directors found that 95% of the app’s reported 20 million users were “automated or from bots.”

  • Goronmon
    7•1 year ago

    But after raising its SoftBank-led $170 million Series C round at a $1.17 billion valuation, the company’s internal troubles became more obvious.

    I feel like every time I read one of these stories, there is a note about a huge investment from SoftBank.

    • operator
      5•1 year ago

      Masayoshi Son (founder of Softbank and the legendary Vision Found) was lucky with Alibaba once. His strategy is literally (confirmed by many founders) that if you throw enough money in there (usually in 150mn+), it’ll scale and be a unicorn.

      Well, what do you think happens if you are a unicorn founder raising maybe 500k-2mn and some oversees fund comes along and gives you 170mn with the only goal of scaling globally.

      Launch events here, new market there, private jets, … Softbank and Son is also known for his lax oversight in his investments and throwing more money at it when they become bankrupt.

      Another famous example is WeWork (10bn+ investment by Softbank).

      And every story is just exceptionally dumb and easily avoidable.

      Source: Experience

    • CIWS-30
      2•1 year ago

      Yep, Softbank seems to have a gift for investing in stuff that fails. Kind of sad to see, I heard that it and Masayoshi Son were decent at business at first.