I was working in a YC startup which was part of this gold rush. At first I was very impressed with an infinite money glitch they discovered.
Just find desperate people who lost their jobs during the pandemic, promise them a new job, collect their phones and emails and start spamming hard, using salespeople named "coaches" and engaging them into a gamified funnel. In the end, sell them idea of taking a loan (or ISA if no bank will give you a loan cause of your credit history) and get part of that loan as an enrolment fee. All of that set-up in the spirit of a charity organisation of course, helping people to "start a new life".
The application was initially made by founders who finished a similar bootcamp as well. Terrible software decisions and randomly assembled tech stack included. Then hiring junior guys to clean up after bootcampers, middle level guys to clean up after fired junior guys, and lastly senior guys (my company) to write some code which actually works.
After application was finally working they got XXX millions of VC funding, and started hiring everything they can, then firing, hiring, firing and so on, we all got fired eventually and I dont even know what's happening there now, but I remember it was a big mess.
Founders are former bank's people, loans are still their bread even after getting into IT. They were totally convinced they are the next unicorn, but just "one talented growth-hacker" away from it, always looking for that hacker but never found him i guess.
Just find desperate people who lost their jobs during the pandemic, promise them a new job, collect their phones and emails and start spamming hard, using salespeople named "coaches" and engaging them into a gamified funnel. In the end, sell them idea of taking a loan (or ISA if no bank will give you a loan cause of your credit history) and get part of that loan as an enrolment fee. All of that set-up in the spirit of a charity organisation of course, helping people to "start a new life".
The application was initially made by founders who finished a similar bootcamp as well. Terrible software decisions and randomly assembled tech stack included. Then hiring junior guys to clean up after bootcampers, middle level guys to clean up after fired junior guys, and lastly senior guys (my company) to write some code which actually works.
After application was finally working they got XXX millions of VC funding, and started hiring everything they can, then firing, hiring, firing and so on, we all got fired eventually and I dont even know what's happening there now, but I remember it was a big mess.
Founders are former bank's people, loans are still their bread even after getting into IT. They were totally convinced they are the next unicorn, but just "one talented growth-hacker" away from it, always looking for that hacker but never found him i guess.