I am a former Newchip employee and I want to thank DC Palter for writing this article. Everything he described about its business model and culture is accurate to my knowledge. Newchip is a financially and morally bankrupt company.
I knew a day of reckoning was inevitable given the unsustainability of its business model not to mention nearly 100% employee turnover. Newchip's highly deceptive practices—from recruiting to marketing/sales—were borderline if not outright fraud and weighed heavily on my conscience and ultimately made me depart.
The company’s business model is a scam. People are deceived into working here. You don’t work in venture capital. You sell an overpriced online fundraising class. You promise the world to founders, many of them first-time or bootstrapped entrepreneurs or foreigners unaware of Newchip’s awful reputation in the Austin business company (a legit accelerator like Capital Factory wants nothing to do with us). You chase only one thing: their money. Exploiting the ignorant and vulnerable was Newchip’s real business model.
The levels of deceit in sales and everyday operations will make you feel like a used car salesman and will weigh heavily on your conscience. Many of us had trouble sleeping because we knew deep down we were perpetuating a scam on top of the stress of knowing we can be terminated at any moment for not hitting quota or even speaking up.
CEO Andrew Ryan, formerly known as Ryan Rafols, is a con artist. He changed his legal name when it was beginning to dawn on him that more and more people were aware of his awful reputation.
He is a fraud, bully, narcissist, compulsive liar, and more. He has openly bragged about tricking people into spending their life savings. He has sexually assaulted and harassed multiple female employees. Read the stories published in the Daily Beast and Tech Crunch.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/newchip-ceo-andrew-ryan-accused-of-sexual-harassment-mismanagement
Ryan's past is extremely shady and nothing can be independently verified. For example, he claimed to be a former Army “missile engineer” and “rocket scientist” but he has never worked at NASA or in the aerospace industry not to mention he has no engineering degree whatsoever. Nor has he had “four exits.” There is no record of past IPOs. He is not an accredited investor and has no right to call himself one.
Everything toxic at Newchip can be traced to Ryan. See all the negative Glassdoor reviews mentioning him by name. You hear the same story over and over again. Talk any ex-employee and you will hear the same stories.
On more than one occasion, Ryan has threatened employees to write good reviews on Glassdoor. He also paid tens of thousands to a PR firm in a desperate attempt to scrub negative reviews from the Internet.
All of this goes to show how fake everything was at Newchip. Company reviews are fake. Business model is fake. Financials are fake (a former CFO cooked the books on Ryan’s orders which is partially why the company is where it is now). Ryan’s professed Christianity is fake. Everything’s fake.
The house of cards has finally come down and the company is now in Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Look it up. The lawsuits from founders and investors he ripped off and former employees he exploited and harassed have finally caught up to him.
Seeing Ryan lie under oath during court proceedings was truly sickening and that was the last straw for many of us.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, SEC, FTC, and all other government regulatory agencies need to investigate and follow the ongoing Chapter 7 bankruptcy case. When all the dirty laundry is allowed to air, Ryan will very likely go to jail.
And don’t be surprised if Andrew Ryan changes his name again or launches a future scam. Con artists always do.
