The german site Gründerszene (focused on Fintech and Startups) just published the most interesting (and in my opinion also most important) article about Savedroid I've ever read so far:
Ex-Savedroid-Mitarbeiter berichten: „Es war wie bei Wolf of Wall Street“https://www.gruenderszene.de/allgemein/savedroid-mitarbeiter-icoIt's too long to translate it all, but I'll translate what I believe to be the most important parts:
Headline:
Former Savedroid employees report: "It was like Wolf of Wall Street"About dick-pics:
- the PR-Stunt in April wasn't the only weird idea of the CEO Yassin Hankir. He also thought about replacing the website with the picture of a dick (when doing the Exit-Scam-Prank)
- If a potential (token) Investor changed his mind and quit the pay process Yassin wanted to insert a message that the potential Investor only wouldn't want to buy because he has a small dick.
- The team convinced Hankir not to do such things
About work-atmosphere:
- "It was dirty and the atmosphere was depressing" a former employee says
- Although Savedroid has to deal with sensitive data employees had (have?) to work on their private Laptops
- In the "welcome-letter" new employees were prompted to give Savedroid a good rating on Kununu (rating portal for employers)
- The mood was good in 2017, there was "startup-spirit", but also on Kununu the ratings went shouth in 2018
Then the article gives links to bad ratings as an employer...
- Although employees worked overtime it was never enough and while there is an agreement in the contract that Savedroid would pay employees with Crypto for overhours, several report they were not paid
- Founders booked a trip to Thailand for the team in May to lift the mood - it was paid with ICO-money.
- The gap between founders and employees became greater over time and Yassin Hankir increasingly acted like a "dictator"
Advertising & ICO:
- The Facebook-ban of Crypto-Ad's hit Savedroid hard. Traffic went down 95%
- The daily number of token sold tokens also went down
- They've tried to circumvent the ban with writing Crypto with „Ω“ instead of "o" - but it didn't really work out.
- Shortly before the ICO ended the Sales team got order to contact big Investors and to convince them to give more money. They had to promise premium and a good return. A prediction of an increase in value of 500% and more in a few months was also used to convince Investors.
- Also a fake-image of SVD trading on Binance was sent to Investors to convince them
- Savedroid wanted to hire a german rapper as testimonial but only hired Influencer on YouTube.
- A german Journalist (Roland Klaus), who is also member of the Advisory-Board of Savedroid, made advertising in articles on Wallstreet-online without identifiying it as that
- Savedroid got twice as much money during the ICO as expected but after the ICO also about half of the team left
About competence and expertise:
- Former employees have a lot of doubts that the Savedroid team has the expertise to build safe software
- There is a lack of knowledge about Blockchain-tech
- Until the end of the ICO nobody knew how to build a wallet
- During the ICO there was no work on the product, selling tokens was the only focus
- The website often does not reflect the current status but shows team-members that don't work for Savedroid anymore. Only after multiple requests Savedroid would delete pics of former employees
- The former Savedroid employees who talked to Gründerszene are relieved not to work for Savedroid anymore.
- They had to defend themselves against friends and others because of the PR-Stunt.
- One guy says: "I'm sorry for the team that tried to slow down Yassin". That he talks about it all now is not meant as revenge, he wants to do the right thing and to tell people what happens at Savedroid. He is glad that he left and says: Like in the movie Wolf of Wall Street
What I didn't translate: Gründerszene asked Yassin to directly comment on the allegations but he didn't want to. Instead he sent a Statement "why Savedroid is an attractive employer". In the article his quotes are kind of used to show the gap between reality and his irrelevant advertisement talk... I skipped those parts - because it really is irrelevant.