Brainient, a Romanian startup based in London, was sold today by investors to Teads, a much bigger company in the video ads business, TechCrunch reports. Let’s talk about Emi Gal, Brainient CEO, and what the Techcrunch story does not say:

  1. The deal is worth about 15 million dollars and was pushed by the investors, who were the majority stock holders. The two founders, Emi Gal and Andrei Bărăgan, had little to say in this.
  2. They were running out of money and under pressure to make more money.
  3. The selling price contains a catch: they hired talent with stock options and cash out promises and sold the company with a price to avoid paying the employees. And now they depend upon these employees to hit the targets set to get their full money.

Emi Gal left Romania some years ago, closing a company with some debt. Other people talked about his honesty and his ways of not honoring his promises. In the UK Gal was well regarded and people spoke highly of him. The way he fucked his employees is proof old habits die hard.

 

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