Talk:Startup company/Archives/2014

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Co-founders and promoters
The following was removed by AndyTheGrump. See User_talk:AndyTheGrump for additional details and discussion of AndyTheGrump's repeated edits and reverts. I believe the material about co-founders needs to be balanced and provide real-world examples, otherwise the material ends up having a positively-biased tone that fails to include any of the risks or harmful outcomes of being in co-founder relationships. The two examples given are firmly supported by the sources cited and these are noteworthy instances of co-founder disputes that received substantial media coverage and involved lawsuits where status as "co-founder" and the right to use this title were central issues. AndyTheGrump asserted that this material was off-topic and/or that it was not supported by the sources cited and/or that it violated WP:BLP but none of those arguments against this material remaining part of the article appear valid. I believe it should be added back to the co-founders section, with edits if necessary to ensure that it does not contain any misrepresentation of the facts and circumstances of these two example cases of co-founder reputation/rights disputes.

When there is no definitive agreement, disputes about who the co-founders were can arise. One example of such a dispute was a lawsuit against Elon Musk by a co-founder of Tesla Motors. Martin Eberhard alleged that Musk did not have the right to consider himself a co-founder merely because he provided a large amount of capital and was instrumental in saving the company from bankruptcy. Another example is the case of Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe who had her title as co-founder revoked as part of a pattern of mistreatment revealed when she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit. Wolfe's co-founder "told Ms Wolfe that he was taking away her 'co-founder' title because having a young female co-founder 'makes the company seem like a joke' and 'devalues the company'."


 * The source concerning Tesla Motors does not state that Eberhard alleged that Musk "did not have the right to consider himself a co-founder merely because he provided a large amount of capital and was instrumental in saving the company from bankruptcy" - instead, it reports that the two had previously been involved in "a feud" and had settled their disagreement out of court - with undisclosed details. It says nothing about 'bankruptcy' at all. As for the Tinder case, you were citing allegations as fact - a clear violation of WP:BLP policy. You might also do well to read up on policy regarding reliable sources - the Daily Mirror is a tabloid of questionable repute, and certainly shouldn't be used as a source for such contentious matters. In any case, I see no obvious reason why an article on business startups should concern itself with such matters - fractious bust-ups are a common occurrence amongst those in senior positions in all sorts of companies, and without a source explicitly asserting that there is something special about such disputes in startups, it looks to me to be original research to conclude that there is. It isn't Wikipedia's job to 'warn' potential co-founders of risks - at least not unless we have sources which explicitly do the same thing. And if we do, we certainly shouldn't include cherry-picked and poorly-sourced 'examples' which seem lack any real connection with the article subject beyond fractious name-calling. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:42, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

A better source for the dispute about "co-founder" title in the Tinder case might be this article from The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/01/tinder_sexual_harassment_suit/ RiskNerd (talk) 06:39, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
 * How is the topic relevant to this article? Seems too tangential, even if it wasn't a BLP violation to give such an example. --Ronz (talk) 17:45, 2 July 2014 (UTC)