As an aside Madoff Industries did employ people who earnestly worked outside the Ponzi scheme. I know because I met a few of them when I worked on a database architecture audit for them around 2008.
"Database architecture audit for Madoff Industries" is a pretty good conversation starter as a resume item!
This is a good point, and something that occurred to me after I posted - there's also a type of scam company where honest employees are hired to do something real, but the executive staff are skimming inordinate compensation for themselves or hiding a more nefarious project underneath, like a Ponzi scheme, simple money laundering, or self-dealing / kickback style schemes.
I suppose it's possible that Boom could be one of these, and I don't really have enough data to say whether it is or not.
My personal take on Boom is that it's your typical amateur, marketing-savvy CEO with a lofty dream who managed to collect funding for a project they can't execute on. Whether this kind of thing is a net "good" or not, I'm not sure, but I really don't think it's a "scam" in a mal-intent sort of way.
If I were a VC, I wouldn't invest in an aerospace founder with no aerospace background, but plenty chose to, and their funds are at least being redistributed towards employees and suppliers. The whole idea of Silicon Valley style "innovation" VC is supposedly that their moonshot upsides can patch over their moonshot downsides, no?
bri3d|3 years ago
This is a good point, and something that occurred to me after I posted - there's also a type of scam company where honest employees are hired to do something real, but the executive staff are skimming inordinate compensation for themselves or hiding a more nefarious project underneath, like a Ponzi scheme, simple money laundering, or self-dealing / kickback style schemes.
I suppose it's possible that Boom could be one of these, and I don't really have enough data to say whether it is or not.
My personal take on Boom is that it's your typical amateur, marketing-savvy CEO with a lofty dream who managed to collect funding for a project they can't execute on. Whether this kind of thing is a net "good" or not, I'm not sure, but I really don't think it's a "scam" in a mal-intent sort of way.
If I were a VC, I wouldn't invest in an aerospace founder with no aerospace background, but plenty chose to, and their funds are at least being redistributed towards employees and suppliers. The whole idea of Silicon Valley style "innovation" VC is supposedly that their moonshot upsides can patch over their moonshot downsides, no?