In 2016 an internal legal investigation at Zenefits found the company’s licensing was out of compliance and that Conrad had created a browser extension to skirt training requirements for selling insurance in California.[15] After self-reporting these issues, Zenefits hired an independent third party to do an internal audit of its licensing controls and sent the report to all 50 states.[16] The California Department of Insurance as well as the Massachusetts Division of Insurance began investigations of their own based on Zenefits’ report.[17][18] Parker Conrad resigned as CEO and director in February and COO David O. Sacks was named as his replacement.
Zenefits was valued at $4.5b in 2015 and was all downhill after the incident; they did three rounds of layoffs in four years and were eventually acquired by a no-name company for an undisclosed price in 2022. It’s unclear how much of that decline was directly a result of the fraud, vs. the founder’s departure, vs. them always having had poor fundamentals and being overvalued at $4.5b due to hype.
Don’t forget Zenefits!
Zenefits was valued at $4.5b in 2015 and was all downhill after the incident; they did three rounds of layoffs in four years and were eventually acquired by a no-name company for an undisclosed price in 2022. It’s unclear how much of that decline was directly a result of the fraud, vs. the founder’s departure, vs. them always having had poor fundamentals and being overvalued at $4.5b due to hype.
Thanks! I don’t really understand if this technically qualifies as fraud, but seems spiritually similar – I added it to the table and cited you.