
Please let us to buy your startup?!
Erm… maybe?
After another short chat with a bunch of people in another coworking space, we figured that it wouldn’t be long before an email like the one below would be sent to some startup founder, at some point, in the coming months.
It’ll be ‘totes legit’ too!
Hello startup founder.
My uncle was a very big suporter of business people in our region, and helped many peoples with their businesses.
But lately he has taken badly ill and would like to use his vast sums of moneys to buy great online businesses for our next generation.
We would like to be buying your startup, ismellyourfood.net, for a fair sums of $1,200,000,000.00.
As his health is quickly going worse, I would like to help you conclude this transactions rapidly.
If you would be happy for this financial rewards and transaction, please send me an emails with your social society number so I can send the Western Union details for the small transfer of $430 for the due dilgence process.
Thanks,
His honoruable Major Mayor Totes Legitonari III
With the current hype, celebration and almost-exclusive media exposure of startup fund-raises and acquisitions; it’s only a matter of time before some of the swindling that plagues many startup ecosystems becomes as obvious as these notorious scam emails.
I constantly hear of atrocious accounts from founders about vendors or individuals with misaligned value propositions that border on being immoral, sometimes arguably even illegal.
And I’m also certain we’re not the only ones hearing these complaints.
Now whilst we vet and re-vet, each solution provider we connect to growing businesses through included.co; the question that haunts me is:
“What about the malicious players, how could or should we protect young businesses from them?!”
This is one of those questions that rockets up a bunch of follow up questions within my head, so here’s a few quick examples:
Would it help to share the complaints of predatory behaviour across the 100s of ecosystems included works with? Would it lead to nonstop legal action regarding slander? Could the data be crowdsourced, decentralised or even managed by a non-profit entity? Would it fix the problem or at least help others avoid unnecessary heartache and abuse? Would it be fair to name and shame, and could anything be done to get de-listed?
I do envision a kind of online early warning system that’s built upon a democratised list of who to approach with caution or avoid outright. It could even gather data and ‘flags’ from other community platforms.
Ofcourse there will be issues in governing the content to avoid abuse, but I think right now is the best time to start this conversation, before things get a little too crazy.
