The Tech Sales Newsletter #90: Deflection strategies
After a month of speculation and silence, Deel has finally responded to the now-famous tech sales spy case. I've previously covered both the initial bombshell of a court case and the follow-up affidavit by Keith O'Brien, aka THE DEEL SPY.
This is an important moment for Deel. The opportunity to set things right, put their cards on the table, and reveal the injustice carried out against them.
Deel needs to be factual, humble, and bring back trust. Will they seize the opportunity and set the record straight?
The key takeaway
For tech sales: You should have resigned when I advised you to, my fellow Deel sales rep.
For investors: a16z, it's time for the Zenefits move. This can't continue any longer.
The, erm, Deel “response”
After a month of no response, Deel has deemed that the best possible action is to file a suit against Rippling.
Plaintiff Deel, Inc. (“Deel”) brings this action against Defendants People Center, Inc. d/b/a Rippling (“Rippling”), and unnamed Does 1-100 (the “Does,” and collectively with Rippling, “Defendants”), and alleges as follows:
While Deel is laser-focused on helping its customers succeed, it is now apparent that Deel’s competitors’ primary focus is Deel. One competitor in particular—Rippling—has been so wholly consumed by its obsession with Deel that it is willing to do anything to try to catch up to or destroy Deel, even if that means engaging in unethical or unlawful business practices.
Okay, this sounds serious. Hopefully, there is clearly documented evidence of these horrible infractions.
Haunted by his previous failures, and now fueledby suffocating jealousy at his inability to fairly compete with Deel in the marketplace, Rippling’s co-founder and CEO, Parker Conrad—who was investigated and penalized by the SEC, and exiled from his own former company, Zenefits, for flouting the law—has fallen back on his old playbook: cheating.
Suffocating jealousy, ladies and gentlemen, the hardest of evidences permitted in the court of law.
The definitive tech sales guide to selling AI (LLMs and Enterprise-grade Machine Learning).
On information and belief, what began as mere annoyances from a competitor far in Deel’s rearview mirror has grown exponentially in recent years to a vast and desperate conspiracy that comprises three primary components:
(1) a coordinated and illegal years-long shadow campaign to smear and tarnish Deel’s stellar reputation through secret alliances with powerful lobbyists and a lawyer-turned-serial-instigator who has repeatedly made false and frivolous claims against Deel, all while concealing his longstanding relationship with Rippling;
(2) relentless and obsessive efforts to unlawfully solicit and access Deel’s confidential information—using private investigators, direct outreach to Deel’s employees, and clandestine surveillance—to gain illicitly that which it cannot obtain through legitimate competition; and
(3) rampant unlawful and anticompetitive conduct, driven by Conrad’s trademark disregard for internal processes, controls, and compliance, which allows Rippling to bolster a facade of success and market products and services that it claims comply with the law when Rippling itself does not, allowing Rippling to unfairly steal market share from its law-abiding competitors like Deel.
So while rumors are flying that the Deel CEO has fled to Dubai, the best strategy that their team has been able to muster is to claim a smear campaign, accuse Rippling of doing espionage against Deel, and supposedly that Rippling is a fake and scammy org that needs to be investigated for fraud. Will they address the court case and affidavit by Keith O'Brien?
Rippling is well aware of the existence of these whistleblowers, and for at least one in particular—Keith O’Brien—Rippling used heavy handed tactics to terrorize him and intimidate him into silence, which eventually caused him to have such a massive psychological breakdown that he nearly ended his own life and sought hospitalization.
It is obvious that O’Brien’s contemporaneous emails from when Rippling was traumatizing him tell the true story of why Rippling was trying to “destroy” him: because he “reported the illegal sanctioned payments to Russia” and “with the Central Bank of Ireland via the whistle-blower helpline.” Rippling then “pressured [him] to say things that are not true . . . to damage Deel” and “coerc[ed] him to say that [he] shared data [with Deel]” with threats and bribes, and told him that there “is a pathway forward for [him].” That “pathway” was taking money from Rippling in exchange for Rippling ending its relentless harassment. Taking that “pathway,” O’Brien then filed an affidavit in Ireland—plainly under extreme duress—which is replete with falsehoods and grossly distorts the nature of O’Brien’s interactions with Deel, with whom he was seeking employment precisely to escape the abusive and lawless culture prevalent at Rippling.
So while the interactions of O'Brien were real and literally admitted, they were in fact WHISTLEBLOWING and Rippling BRIBED HIM in exchange for RIPPLING STOPPING TO HARASS HIM.
Yes, bullies love to make you accept money in order to stop bullying you. It's one of the most common schemes of fraud and organized crime, the "I pay you, to leave you alone" strategy. Truly a 6D chess move, if we ever saw one.
Although Rippling’s conduct vis-à-vis O’Brien is not the subject of this action, which is based on Rippling’s unfair competition with and defamation of Deel (Rippling initiated proceedings in Ireland against O’Brien and Deel, attesting that “Ireland is clearly the jurisdiction most closely connected with the wrongs the subject matter of these proceedings”), Deel would be remiss in failing to note how Rippling reacts when confronted with a potential whistleblower who threatens to expose the company as smoke and mirrors. Deel will demonstrate in the Irish courts that Rippling’s allegations about “spies” are nothing more than the latest in a series of ginned-up “wrongs” all designed to support a false narrative against Deel.
This is about the time that we realize that the 74-page lawsuit will provide zero factual evidence. Instead, things are about to get wild. Step one is to position Rippling's CEO as a coke-snorting crime mastermind:
Upon Conrad’s forced expulsion from his own company, his former employees literally had “celebrations” and cried “tears of relief.” The CEO who replaced Conrad reported on Conrad’s culture of “bullying and pressuring employees to cut corners and do the wrong thing.”
And it clearly appears that broken culture of non-compliance has continued at Rippling, which Conrad started just two months after his forced resignation from Zenefits. Because Conrad ported over a significant number of his loyalists at Zenefits to the C-suite at Rippling, Rippling’s workplace culture has been described as “hostile,” “dog-eat-dog,” and “subject to [] tempers, cliques, and seemingly erratic management decisions.” Former Rippling employees have decried the “sad and toxic reality of Rippling leadership openly possessing and using recreational drugs . . . with subordinates during or after Rippling events.” Indeed, at least one witness has reported that Rippling’s leadership pressured female subordinates to snort cocaine at company events.
Now before we continue, let’s aknowledge Parker’s own view of the Zenifits outcome and issues:
Parker Conrad believes several aspects of the Zenefits situation were mischaracterized:
The compliance issues: Conrad states that the licensing compliance problems weren't deliberate attempts to subvert regulations but rather mistakes based on legal advice they received. He mentions, "we didn't think that they had to be [licensed in other states]. And we got that advice repeatedly and in writing from our lawyers on this." He draws a distinction between making unintentional mistakes versus deliberately breaking rules.
The responsibility for compliance issues: Conrad claims that about 70% of the licensing violations were actually on the account management team that reported directly to David Sacks (who replaced Conrad as CEO). He states that Sacks publicly blamed him for compliance issues while concealing that most violations happened on Sacks' own team.
The circumstances of his departure: Conrad describes how there was an agreed-upon "friendly press release" about his departure, but "David just issued a different press release, like literally just a different release than the one that we had agreed to." According to Conrad, this unauthorized release portrayed him as someone who "doesn't care about compliance."
The alleged "party culture": Conrad disputes the media portrayal of a wild party culture at Zenefits. He explains that a story about a condom found in a stairwell of a building housing 30 different companies became exaggerated through repeated retellings into stories about "orgies at like high flying tech startup."
The board's knowledge of issues: Conrad suggests the compliance issues were known to the board and weren't hidden, contrary to what might have been implied in the public narrative.
Conrad's main frustration seems to be that he was unable to effectively tell his side of the story at the time, as he was "hiding in my house, like not talking to like anyone" while Andreessen Horowitz and David Sacks had "crisis PR firms" and "deep investments in media relationships" to shape the narrative.
Now, let's see how this is being picked up and portrayed in this legal complaint:
Because Conrad ported over a significant number of his loyalists at Zenefits to the C-suite at Rippling, Rippling’s workplace culture has been described as “hostile,” “dog-eat-dog,” and “subject to [] tempers, cliques, and seemingly erratic management decisions.” Former Rippling employees have decried the “sad and toxic reality of Rippling leadership openly possessing and using recreational drugs . . . with subordinates during or after Rippling events.” Indeed, at least one witness has reported that Rippling’s leadership pressured female subordinates to snort cocaine at company events. And Rippling’s attitude toward former employees is described as one of “vindictiveness and exclusion.”
Indeed, for one to understand why Rippling’s shocking and lawless corporate culture even exists at all, one must understand the persona and folly of the man who runs it—Parker Conrad. As detailed herein, Conrad has injected his infamous history of “doing the wrong thing” into nearly everything that Rippling does.
Similar to Palmer at Anduril vs. Jason Calacanis, the Zenefits story is about Conrad vs. David Sacks and the role that Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) played in essentially taking over the company.
On information and belief, Conrad has never apologized or admitted wrongdoing for his actions at Zenefits. Evidencing that he learned nothing from his Zenefits failure, he has instead blamed others, including the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, for pushing him out of the company despite his obvious and well-documented illegal conduct and gross mismanagement. It is now apparent that Conrad has made it his life’s goal to exact misguided and petty revenge on those connected with Andreessen, including Deel, in which Andreessen owns a 20% share.
Indeed, on information and belief, Conrad’s fixation with Deel has resulted in the creation of entire groups at Rippling whose sole job is to copy Deel’s products, pursue Deel partners and clients, and monitor Rippling’s own employees’ internal communications and Slack messages in an effort to guard against their departure for better opportunities at Deel.
If we frame things through the perspective of Parker vs. the Bouaziz family + Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), we end up in a very peculiar spot.
It has also solicited Deel employees to pass on to Rippling confidential commercially sensitive information about Deel. And incredibly given Rippling’s recent “spying” allegations—Deel has information to believe that Rippling’s strange obsession with Deel had led Rippling to place an insider at Deel, essentially allowing it to eavesdrop on Deel’s internal communications without Deel’s permission.
Deel takes no pleasure in filing this action, but Rippling has left Deel with no choice. Deel has had enough. It will no longer tolerate Rippling’s unlawful, anticompetitive, and defamatory conduct, which has harmed Deel by hundreds of millions of dollars in terms of lost business opportunities, disrupted relationships with this current and prospective clients and investors, and in terms of the ill-gotten gains that Rippling could achieve not on its own merit, but only by breaking the law.
It’s rather difficult to match the dramatic statements above with the clear and intentional harm demonstrated in the case brought forward by Rippling.
But Zenefits was not the first time Conrad cut corners. And as his tenure at Rippling has shown, it was certainly not his last. Indeed, Conrad has failed at nearly everything he has attempted on his own merit. Perhaps this explains why Conrad will now go to extreme—and as it turns out, unlawful—lengths to satisfy his desperate need to have Rippling not turn out to be yet another personal and career disappointment.
Conrad grew up on New York City’s Upper East Side, where he earned “mediocre” grades at an expensive and prestigious all-boys preparatory school. Despite his mediocrity, Conrad was then admitted to Harvard University.
Predictably, Conrad then failed out of Harvard, which he described as an “incredibly humiliating and shocking experience”—because he apparently did not attend any classes “for like a year.” Despite Conrad’s forced leave of absence from Harvard, he was eventually readmitted, once again showcasing his privilege.
Notably, one of Conrad’s college mentees during his time working at the Harvard Crimson newspaper is now the Editor-in-Chief of the online publication The Information, which has provided significant coverage of Rippling’s recently instigated disputes with Deel. Deel believes that discovery in this matter will show a significant amount of misinformation provided to The Information by Rippling and its agents to propagate stories designed to damage Deel.
The complaint then ventures in an almost comical character assassination, trying to position Conrad's educational history as clear foreshadowing of his vendetta against Deel and as critical in building his mastermind network of lackeys that will attack the poor company.
Worse, Conrad developed software that allowed his staff to circumvent insurance licensing requirements, as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) would later determine. Zenefits employees used Conrad’s cheat-code software to “systemically cheat” throughout his tenure as CEO. The California Department of Insurance stated at the time of its own investigation that, “as far as a company doing what Zenefits has done, I don’t know that we have seen this before.”
Following these revelations, a spokesperson for Anthem Blue Cross described what Conrad was overseeing and doing as “really illegal.” Conrad’s previous self-imposed humiliations and knowledge that he had created a house of cards and was deeply in over his head at Zenefits likely explains why press reports at the time described him as “petrified, his days a series of white-knuckled attempts to escape the clutches of sudden, inadvertent failure.”
Except that no criminal charges were ever filed, and he was obviously able to start a new company with a big part of the core Zenefits team that was not reporting to David Sacks, moving along with him to Rippling. Why is that?
Under Conrad’s leadership, Zenefits had misclassified its own workers, underpaying account executives and salespeople by millions. Employees complained that Conrad had operated the company like a Wolf- of-Wall-Street-esque frat house. The Wall Street Journal reported on company-wide emails that reminded employees to not “smoke, drink, eat, or have sex” in company stairwells after “[c]igarettes, plastic cups filled with beer, and several used condoms were found” there. Zenefits had beer kegs in the office, employees were reportedly taking shots of hard liquor in the office during the workday, and Conrad himself would get drunk and wrestle his coworkers to the floor. Indeed, once Conrad left, Zenefits’s new CEO had to ban drinking alcohol at the office to try to clean up Conrad’s deeply unserious corporate culture.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
To be fair, he does look like somebody who was wrestling with coworkers after an office party.
Indeed, in what sounds like a bad joke but in reality is a perfect microcosm of Conrad’s leadership style, Zenefits reportedly decided to change its previous company motto under Conrad from “Ready. Fire. Aim.” to “Operate With Integrity” after his exit.
The David Sacks PR special right there.
CONRAD FOUNDS AND RUNS RIPPLING BY IMPORTING THE SAME DISDAIN FOR COMPLIANCE THAT GOT HIM EXILED FROM HIS OWN PREVIOUS STARTUP, ZENEFITS
Conrad founded Rippling in Delaware just two months after being kicked out of his former company and leaving it in financial ruin.
Conrad jump-started Rippling by inviting over a contingent of his old Zenefits crew into senior positions at Rippling, including the former Director of Engineering at Zenefits, Zenefits’ former SVP of Customer Experience, and Zenefits’s former Chief Revenue Officer. This overlap was no accident. Rippling was Conrad’s attempt to rebuild his Zenefits enterprise—it apparently uses the same “map” as Zenefits, and Conrad is transparent that he wants to show the world that “Rippling was the company that Zenefits would have become” under his continued stewardship.
While the whole complaint is just one ugly misrepresentation after another, the nastiest turn has to be this:
Conrad’s co-founder at Rippling, Prasanna Sankaranarayanan, also known as Prasanna Sankar (“Sankar”), was one of Conrad’s loyalists at Zenefits, and joined Conrad as Rippling’s CTO. Rippling’s co-founder is reportedly currently on the run from authorities in India, following deeply disturbing revelations levied by his wife in court proceedings that Sankar repeatedly sexually and physically abused her, and has now absconded with their nine-year-old son.
Source: Complaint - C.A. No. N25C-04-329 DJB
This is an actual picture they put in the complaint. Prasanna has written about his situation extensively and what appears to be a very ugly divorce playing out in public, with a significant financial interest for his wife. The choice to put this as a "disturbing revelation" in the complaint is peculiar, to say the least. As a reminder, the legal firm representing Deel dropped them as a client prior to this, erm, "legal" claim.
The document then goes over the activity of Thomas Grady, a lawyer and investor in Rippling, against Deel over the last several years. The main argument is that he has led a campaign against them, which is probably the closest we've gotten so far to a description of real events.
Unfortunately, although Deel has expended significant resources trying to defend itself against Rippling and Grady’s sham whack-a mole press and regulatory onslaught, Rippling’s false smear campaign has accomplished its real purpose: damaging Deel’s commercial reputation and relationships with its current and prospective customers, partners, investors, and employees. As a direct—and directly cited—result of the negative news cycles created and amplified by Rippling and its agents, partners have pulled out of co-sponsored industry events, at least one fintech company has closed financing opportunities for Deel employees, and several potential customers who were close to signing contracts with Deel opted to back out.
For example, one prospective customer, Prospect #1, explained to Deel in September 2023 that it decided not to work with Deel because “[t]he . . . concerns with misclassifying your own employees does not inspire trust that you can properly classify ours,” which created a “confidence issue.” Another, Prospect #2, decided not to work with Deel in July-August 2023 because “that article [about alleged employee misclassification] . . . seriously . . . has a negative impact on your reputation.” Others, including Prospect #3 and Prospect #4, declined for similar reasons.
And the ripple effects from Rippling’s misconduct continue to persist. In September 2024, another potential client that was evaluating Deel, Prospect #5, cited the stale Business Insider article regarding the purported misclassification issues planted by Rippling, which Prospect #5 stated “was the determining factor” in their decision to choose another vendor besides Deel.
It's very likely that repeated revelations in the media and by regulators about the behavior of Deel have led to customers preferring to opt for other companies with fewer compliance issues. The obvious thing here, of course, is that typically when there is smoke, there is also fire. This complaint fails to counter the most practical viewpoint here - that Rippling's behavior has been driven as a response by Deel's infractions, rather than the reverse.
In fact, and ironically given the implausible Deel espionage tale Rippling has spun to the press, Deel has been investigating for many months that it is Rippling that has a spy inside Deel. Indeed, Deel has reason to believe that Rippling has already unlawfully acquired Deel’s confidential information. On April 15, 2025, a media outlet asked Deel to comment on an upcoming story that it was writing based on grossly mischaracterized discussions from a recent confidential Deel board of directors meeting, which purported to include an (inaccurate) disclosure of attorney-client privileged information. There is no way this outlet would be privy to this information, albeit inaccurate, without a source at Deel. Given the similarities between the outlet’s description of its unpublished story and a letter that Deel received from Rippling’s litigation counsel that same day, Deel strongly suspects, and alleges on information and belief, that Rippling is the one engaging in “corporate espionage.”
This is a very interesting section. The story refered to here was released one day later in an article from “The Information”. Let’s take a look at some key quotes:
The VC firm is playing a central role in the fight between rival human resources software companies Deel, which it backs, and Rippling. Andreessen has been advising Deel, one of its fastest-growing investments, to push back against the accusations Rippling made in a California court filing last month that Deel hired a spy to deliver inside information on Rippling.
The spy scandal has put billions of dollars in potential profits at risk for Andreessen, which is Deel’s biggest investor. There’s also a personal element to the fight: Deel is accused of spying on Rippling, whose chief executive, Parker Conrad, has said he was pushed out of his previous startup, Zenefits, by Andreessen Horowitz nearly a decade ago.
a16z is perceived to be playing a central role in managing the fallout of this. More specifically:
In the middle of it all is a top partner at the VC firm, Anish Acharya, who is the only venture capitalist on Deel’s six-member board. In internal meetings at Deel a few weeks ago, Acharya argued against singling out any Deel executives, a person with direct knowledge of the meetings said. He argued that Deel’s board should take no immediate action, make no public statement and deny any wrongdoing at that time. The company hasn’t announced an investigation into the allegations. It is unclear whether the board is investigating the matter.
Andreessen Horowitz helped bring in its favored advisers. Deel replaced its law firm, Paul Weiss, with Skadden Arps, which has worked with Andreessen Horowitz, to prepare a legal defense and countersuit against Rippling. Paul Weiss would not comment. Andreessen also helped bring in a new crisis public relations representative, Michael Sitrick, to handle the fallout.
The obvious question is - why waste so many resources on protecting the Deel leadership when the optics look unsustainable? Well, there are two reasons. The first one is that ironically, the situation with Conrad and Zenefits actually led to a big shift in VCs trying to avoid being seen as displacing founders:
Acharya’s support for Deel follows a recent playbook by Andreessen and other VCs to more aggressively support even the most embattled founders. In 2022, the firm backed a new real estate venture, Flow, by Adam Neumann, the disgraced WeWork cofounder. The next year, it worked to keep in place the CEO of Synapse, a fintech startup that later collapsed, owing customers tens of millions of dollars.
Another Andreessen-backed founder who won the firm’s support amid controversy was Henry Ward of Carta, whose startup secondary trading business was accused of misusing customer data last year. “Everyone stuck with me,” he said in an interview Monday. “I think the world quadrupled down on founder-led companies.”
He added the VC firm “had a history” of pushing out founders in the past, referring to Conrad and Zenefits. “My view is they probably learned from that.”
In a podcast interview in 2022, Acharya was asked how he navigates conflict with Bouaziz. “Generally, the way I work is that we always defer to the founder,” Acharya said. “So whatever Alex wants to do, I always commit to giving him the strong form of the truth, and then supporting him in whatever he decides.”
It’s an industry trend that Bouaziz had noticed. He said in a separate 2022 podcast interview that venture capitalists had become “a lot more founder-centric than they used to be, compared to some super cutthroat investors that were in the past. It’s a luxury we have nowadays that a lot of previous entrepreneurs did not have.”
Now, let's see how Deel is using this trust and additional problem-solving capacity. It's time for the closing argument of this very "legitimate" complaint:
On information and belief, Conrad knows he cannot win a fair fight with his competitors, so he does the only thing he knows how to do: he cheats.
He cheats by creating a culture of fear, intimidation, surveillance, retribution and abuse at Rippling to try to prevent his employees from exercising their rights to leave to work for better jobs at competitors.
He cheats by thumbing his nose at compliance and process, despite purporting to sell those same things to his customers.
He cheats by stealing his own customer’s and employee’s payroll taxes and benefit dollars, and reporting them as Rippling’s income to defraud his investors.
He cheats by falsely advertising Rippling’s products, functionality, and costs.
He cheats by disparaging his competitor’s products with lies and misleading advertising statements.
He cheats by stealing confidential data from his own vendors and partners to create competing products.
He cheats by flouting international sanctions regulations.
He cheats by engaging in malignant and defamatory public relations smear campaigns replete with false information to sabotage his competitors by making false statements to the press and regulators.
And he cheats by illicitly obtaining and using his competitor’s confidential information for the purpose of harming them.
Given Conrad’s stewardship of Rippling and the collision course with potential liability he has once again created, it will not be surprising if Conrad’s employees are once again soon “celebrati[ng]” and crying “tears of relief” following this cheater’s fourth forced removal from one of his own ventures.
I don't know what they expected out of this. This has done nothing to reassure the employees, customers, or investors. At best, it has shown a strong penchant for the most sensationalist and nasty way of representing your opponent. It's difficult to believe that the tactics and attitude shown here came as a last resort - they are indicative of the systemic mindset and approach within the organization towards its primary competitor.
At this stage, however, it's important to note that the Bouaziz are not operating alone. Andreessen Horowitz has taken the lead in protecting their investment according to “The Information”:
The VC firm owns about 20% of Deel, the company said in a lawsuit against Rippling Friday. That likely would be among the largest percentage ownership stakes any single VC firm has in a private company valued over $10 billion. The stake would be worth more than $2.5 billion based on Deel’s most recent valuation of $12.6 billion.
Source: Anish Acharya profile on X
The Deel investment was the first and by far the best for Acharya, until recently a relatively low-profile consumer tech and fintech investor and weekend DJ who goes by the name illScience. He was promoted to be hte firm’s head of consumer investing last year. A software engineer by training, he previously founded and sold two companies—one to Google and another to Credit Karma—before joining Andreessen Horowitz in 2019.
That year, he met Bouaziz in San Francisco’s South Park, in a meeting brokered by Deel angel investor Ryan Hoover.
Acharya has said he was drawn to Bouaziz’s energy rather than his technical knowledge. “We didn’t talk that much about the business,” Acharya later recalled in a podcast interview. “It was that feeling I remember—that feeling that this person is going to do something.”
The firm led Deel’s $16 million Series A round at a $60 million valuation, Bouaziz has said. It followed on with additional investments in later rounds.
Bouaziz later said he took Acharya’s initial investment offer at a discount to others. “I liked the fact that he was new at the firm, so tying his future to ours was a big part of my thinking process,” Bouaziz said.
Deel became one of Silicon Valley’s fastest-growing software startups in part by allowing companies to hire and pay software engineers in lower-cost countries. It charged customers fees to become the “employer of record” for employees based in countries where the customers didn’t have legal offices, and later expanded into running payroll for companies around the world.
Deel told investors last year in a presentation it was the fastest company ever to reach $500 million in revenue, and it forecast about $1.7 billion in revenue by 2026.
Andreessen Horowitz touted Deel and its CEO. The firm published a case study on Deel, saying it was “reshaping how businesses hire, pay and manage talent across 150+ countries.” Last month, Bouaziz had a headline speaking gig at the VC firm’s annual fintech conference in Park City, Utah. Ben Horowitz is also close to Bouaziz, people familiar with the matter said. Acharya’s personal X profile displays a banner picture of himself with Bouaziz.
There is a lot of money on the table. There are a lot of ego points. It's called sunk-cost fallacy.
The idea that if you just keep pushing through, Deel will somehow come out on the other side unscathed, and all those imaginary billions will be sitting there, waiting to be cashed out.
