Did my old job only exist because of fraud?
Key takeaways
- Early in my software engineering career, the UK-based startup I worked at, Genie DB, was taken over by a US Venture Capital fund, Frost VP, owned by Stuart Frost.
- For a while I lived the start-up life: building rapidly and playing Foosball1.
- A decade later I heard from a former colleague that Frost was being sued by the SEC for fraud.
Early in my software engineering career, the UK-based startup I worked at, Genie DB, was taken over by a US Venture Capital fund, Frost VP, owned by Stuart Frost. I was functionally the only piece that came to the US. The code was rebuilt, the rest of the team eventually rotated out, even the core strategy was replaced. But I was early in my career and excited to be working in the VC tech-startup world. I ended up making my life in the US, so this was a pretty pivotal phase in my life.
For a while I lived the start-up life: building rapidly and playing Foosball1. GenieDB actively rejected revenue opportunities (a la Silicon Valley) with the aim of getting acquired for pioneering technology. We limped along for years with never more than 3 customers, even when big-tech and eventually open-source did what we tried to do better than us. I left with mixed feelings and eventually came to realize we never had the serious footing it would have taken to actually develop significant technology.
A decade later I heard from a former colleague that Frost was being sued by the SEC for fraud. Still not sure what to make of my time at GenieDB, I was curious enough to skim the complaint, where I saw this line: