So you raise $80m and are about to raise another $40m from Goldman Sachs.
And you go from that
to going bust in 5 days
5 days!
Ozy Media was founded in 2013 by Goldman Sachs alumni with one of them having Harvard, Stanford & McKinsey on his resume.
Crazy exposure – crazy growth – the money was flowing in
And in 2017, people started to smell something fishy
How much of their growth was bought versus earned?
Not many (if any) paid channels scale linearly as there’s always a loss of efficiency.
So they needed more cash to show growth which was the expectation of previous investors
They line up Goldman and as part of Goldman’s due diligence process, they wanted to verify the quality of their YouTube numbers.
And sure enough, on a conference call between one of the founders, Goldman & a YT exec, those fears were allayed.
Only – they weren’t.
Something felt off so Goldman decided to email the exec directly
who then shared his ignorance of any such call.
Why?
Because he wasn’t part of that call. The other founder had impersonated the YT exec!
So from that to the company going belly up – 5 days.
It’s a tired old cliché but honesty truly is the best policy.
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