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Speaker 1: Just over a year ago, Francisco Reordan was a twenty
Speaker 1: seven year old software engineer, and he joined a venture
Speaker 1: capital firm called Rothenberg Ventures. The company's founder, Mike Rothenberg,
Speaker 1: was a young, charismatic Stanford University grad, and he was
Speaker 1: known around Silicon Valley for throwing these extravagant parties. Francisco
Speaker 1: had heard about his new employer's reputation, partly from a
Speaker 1: skeptical story I wrote for Business Week back in At
Speaker 1: the time, Francisco didn't think much of it. It made
Speaker 1: me think it was a little bit risky, but um,
Speaker 1: I still thought the company was making good investments based
Speaker 1: on their portfolio, so I said, rush those concerns aside
Speaker 1: and in retrospect. Uh, I shouldn't have done that. I
Speaker 1: shouldn't have done that. Francisco says this because soon after
Speaker 1: he joined, he started noticing some unusual things, things that
Speaker 1: were raising his suspicions. The more he dug around, the
Speaker 1: more he found. In just a few months in he
Speaker 1: discovered something he thought was bad, maybe even against the law,
Speaker 1: something that bothered him enough to take the very serious
Speaker 1: step of secretly reporting it to government regulators. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: the internal debate was what will people think of me
Speaker 1: for doing this? I felt, I'm pretty sure it was
Speaker 1: the right thing to do, but you know, I thought
Speaker 1: about what are the consequences to me personally if I
Speaker 1: love the whistle? A week after Francisco filled out an
Speaker 1: online form on the website of the SEC short for
Speaker 1: the Securities and Exchange Commission, a lawyer from the Commission
Speaker 1: got in touch with him. From there, Prince Cisco became
Speaker 1: something of a double agent, providing the government information about
Speaker 1: his employer. Francisco's actions set in motion a series of
Speaker 1: events that ultimately brought down one of the venture capital
Speaker 1: industries aspiring stars. In addition to being investigated by the
Speaker 1: sec Rothenburg and his firm today is facing lawsuits from investors, creditors,
Speaker 1: and former employees. Hi I'm Akio and I'm Adam Satriano.
Speaker 1: And this week on Decrypted the whistleblower who secretly took on.
Speaker 1: An ambitious venture capitalist is coming out, revealing his identity
Speaker 1: and publicly speaking out about his experiences for the very
Speaker 1: first time. Francisco said he decided to speak to us
Speaker 1: in part to encourage others to take action if they're
Speaker 1: seeing bad behavior at their companies. And Silicon Valley, where
Speaker 1: corporate governance sometimes takes a back seat to growing fast
Speaker 1: and making a name for yourself, employees are serving as
Speaker 1: one of the industry's toughest checks. So, Adam, you wrote
Speaker 1: a story about Mike Rothenberg and his VC firm. Back
Speaker 1: in the headline was telling Lee Silicon Valley's party animal. Yes,
Speaker 1: he did not like that. Yeah, I bet give us
Speaker 1: some background about the guy. What got me interested was
Speaker 1: you had this young venture capitalist. He had raised a
Speaker 1: decent amount of money, and I had also heard the
Speaker 1: story that he had first introduced Mark Zuckerberg to Instagram's founder,
Speaker 1: Kevin's instroum. This was back when they were in their
Speaker 1: college days. But more than anything, I had heard about
Speaker 1: these events that he was throwing around San Francisco. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you give us an example. Well, my favorite was
Speaker 1: these events that he had had that he called puppy
Speaker 1: parties and they would rent out puppy is that people
Speaker 1: could pet. But there was this other one they did
Speaker 1: Quity called founders Field Day, and this was at a
Speaker 1: T and T park where the San Francisco Giants baseball
Speaker 1: team plays, and he branded the whole thing out, outfitted
Speaker 1: it with virtual reality boosts and other thing for entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: to come and play with. Yeah, this is the thing
Speaker 1: that the HBO show Silicon Valley ended up parodying, right.
Speaker 1: It was this perfect example of all the absurdity and
Speaker 1: exuberance of the startup lifestyle. Richard, after your perfect game
Speaker 1: at tech Crunch Disrupt a few weeks ago, we fell
Speaker 1: in love with you and your tech. Look. We know
Speaker 1: everyone in the valley is after you, and we know
Speaker 1: that you're probably going to go with Peter Gregory, but
Speaker 1: we'd love to have you come play on our team.
Speaker 1: Let's Sternteller capital funding on your Series A financing, because together, Richard,
Speaker 1: we'd be home run. And Rothenberg really seemed like a
Speaker 1: character from the show. When I interviewed him for that
Speaker 1: story in I sometimes wondered if he was putting me on.
Speaker 1: He has a real gift for hyperbole, even by the
Speaker 1: lofty standards of Silicon Valley. Here's a clip from a
Speaker 1: talkie gave its Stanford a few years ago, and we
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit about blue oceans. So
Speaker 1: when you're in a blue ocean, it means that it's
Speaker 1: kind of a new market. It hasn't fully developed, and
Speaker 1: people are I'm not yet sure where it's going to go,
Speaker 1: but everybody wins because it's a blue ocean and everybody's
Speaker 1: got the opportunities. And now back to red oceans. Rewind
Speaker 1: what did you just say. In a blue ocean, everybody
Speaker 1: can win. And the story we did wasn't a flattering profile.
Speaker 1: That some former employees told me that Rothenberg made them
Speaker 1: buy up all the week's issues a business week at
Speaker 1: the airport so they wouldn't see him. But the firm
Speaker 1: was doing just fine even after your story. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they aren't a big firm by any stretch, but they
Speaker 1: were backing a lot of companies like the stock trading
Speaker 1: app robin Hood, which is now valued at more than
Speaker 1: a billion dollars. And it was with that backdrop that
Speaker 1: Francisco joined Rothenberg Ventures to run their website and office
Speaker 1: I T system. We recently visited Francisco at his one
Speaker 1: bedroom apartment in one of San Francisco's residential neighborhoods. It's
Speaker 1: in an old building built after the nineteen o six earthquake.
Speaker 1: It's at the top of one of the city's many
Speaker 1: large hills. Thanks. Thanks, I thought you like. He gave
Speaker 1: us a quick tour. It's essentially a nerdy bachelor pad.
Speaker 1: There was a big wayboard on one side of the
Speaker 1: living room, which I've seen in the bedrooms of some
Speaker 1: of my other friends who are engineers too. It's so
Speaker 1: that they can write out their code by hands. Francisco
Speaker 1: so had these three big computer monitors on his desk,
Speaker 1: plus a few consoles to play his video games. And
Speaker 1: he had these framed pictures of Apple's famous ad campaign
Speaker 1: dubbed Think Different, featuring people like Picasso. His bedroom and
Speaker 1: his kitchen were a little bit messy. Can I see
Speaker 1: what's in your fridge? Oh, you're soilent drinker For our listeners,
Speaker 1: Soilent is a drink made out of these different nutritional powders,
Speaker 1: and it's really popular with coders who don't want to
Speaker 1: spend time eating real food. Anyway. That's all to say
Speaker 1: that Francisco is a lot like other young engineers in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. He went to Stanford and the first job
Speaker 1: he took straight out of school ended up getting bought
Speaker 1: by the tech giant Cisco, not to be confused with
Speaker 1: the nickname that Francisco goes by. And then with that
Speaker 1: small amount of money he ended up making from that acquisition,
Speaker 1: he started his own company that was an exchange for
Speaker 1: betting on the price of bitcoin. This kind of options
Speaker 1: market for bitcoin turned out not to be compliant with
Speaker 1: federal regulations, so the government sent the letter to shut
Speaker 1: it down, and he did not long after. In February,
Speaker 1: Rothenberg Ventures hired Francisco. Rothenberg offered him a salary of
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty thousand dollars plus a thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollar bonus, and although he said the firm had scaled
Speaker 1: back on some of those glitzier events, it still had
Speaker 1: a luxury suite at the Basketball Arena where the Golden
Speaker 1: State Warriors played. He went to the games and even
Speaker 1: saw a Rihanna concert there once, all in the company's dime.
Speaker 1: It was a sweet job for a young guy like Francisco,
Speaker 1: but it didn't take him long to start to notice
Speaker 1: some things. Well, the first red flag is actually my
Speaker 1: first week on the director of finance, who was also
Speaker 1: the head of clients quit. She just ran out. I
Speaker 1: didn't know why. Nobody explained it to me, but that
Speaker 1: was the first red flag. Was it clear that something
Speaker 1: was weird was going on? It was clear that something
Speaker 1: weird was going on, but I didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1: I thought it might have been something personal or um.
Speaker 1: One of the things I suspected was that it was
Speaker 1: just like you broy an environment for Not long after,
Speaker 1: Francisco said there was another troubling incident. Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: growing incident. Somebody on the investment team grow up to
Speaker 1: an executive assistant. Um might get it up, putting him
Speaker 1: on unpaid leave for a while. And then um, he
Speaker 1: came back shortly before everyone was put on you know,
Speaker 1: let's go out basically where it was it? Where did
Speaker 1: this happen? Just at the office or at the party?
Speaker 1: It was a yeah party, It was actually Mike's birthday.
Speaker 1: Everyone went out to a bar tonic con Pope and
Speaker 1: lots of shots. Um. The growing thing happened kind of
Speaker 1: r in the night. So that there's some early red flags.
Speaker 1: But so you've cat your it got your suspicion zone.
Speaker 1: But then you still you were still learning things. What
Speaker 1: else where you learning? Yeah? So I had my initial suspicions. UM.
Speaker 1: A whole theme throughout everything was just ridiculous spending UM,
Speaker 1: and I like sports suites UM. And then I had
Speaker 1: some additional suspicions UM. The whole time River STUDIOSUM was
Speaker 1: in the same building. But Mike never really explained the
Speaker 1: funding situation. Let me explain a little bit. In addition
Speaker 1: to Rothenberg Ventures the VC firm, Mike has also set
Speaker 1: up another business, a production company called River Studios that
Speaker 1: made virtual reality videos, and he set up another business
Speaker 1: on top of that called River Enterprises, which was another
Speaker 1: way of investing in companies. Francisco says Mike owned a
Speaker 1: major interest in these new businesses. They were supposed to
Speaker 1: be separate from the venture capital firm that Francisco worked for,
Speaker 1: which was managing other people's money. But Francisco was being
Speaker 1: regularly asked to do work for the other businesses, and
Speaker 1: that made him uncomfortable because he was supposed to work
Speaker 1: for just the VC fund. I felt like I'd been
Speaker 1: do by Mike. I felt like you know, I came
Speaker 1: in to build this l people at all, to make
Speaker 1: things it's easier for the LPs. That turned out he
Speaker 1: was actually using it as you know, a way to
Speaker 1: mislead the LPs, like one of the one of the
Speaker 1: things that it was used for its sending out mass
Speaker 1: emails with notifications about the annual reports, and these funeral
Speaker 1: reports didn't tell the whole story. He left out big things.
Speaker 1: Francisco had access to the company's I T system, so
Speaker 1: he started doing some sleuthing. In a minute, we'll find
Speaker 1: out what he discovered, But first a word from our sponsor.
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Speaker 1: Before the break, Francisco had started noticing some things that
Speaker 1: made him suspicious of the venture capital firm he just joined,
Speaker 1: and he started poking around on top of the lavish spending.
Speaker 1: Francisco would later discover internal documents that showed that the
Speaker 1: management fees the VC firm had collected from its investors.
Speaker 1: So this is the money specifically intended for operating the
Speaker 1: fund was actually being used by the virtual reality companies
Speaker 1: that Rothenburg was funding instead. I kept escalating and escalating. UM.
Speaker 1: Also because I made the LP portal, I I asked
Speaker 1: to upload annual reports, so I look at those, and
Speaker 1: I'd see that these companies weren't disclosed them, Like there's
Speaker 1: zero mention of River Enterprises in any of the annual reports. UM.
Speaker 1: Zero I mentioned of River Studios and annual reports. UM.
Speaker 1: Also so that you're concerned that investors didn't even know
Speaker 1: that they were in sort of indirectly at least funding
Speaker 1: some of these other activities. Exactly. Most people shrugged off
Speaker 1: what they were seeing at Rothenberg Ventures. I spoke with
Speaker 1: former employees who said that even though that they had
Speaker 1: felt uncomfortable, nobody thought to step forward. And it might
Speaker 1: sound like Francisco's nitpicking these tiny technical details here, but
Speaker 1: I ran it by Andrew Touch, a professor specializing in
Speaker 1: financial regulation at Washington University School Law, and he said
Speaker 1: This sounds like a case of self dealing, which is
Speaker 1: when a person who's supposed to be looking out for
Speaker 1: the interests of investors instead takes advantage of his position
Speaker 1: to benefit him or herself. Apparently the courts are pretty
Speaker 1: strict about this, Andrew said, this fidciary duty is the
Speaker 1: bedrack of finance of maintaining the trust between companies and
Speaker 1: their investors. At the time that Francisco did and get
Speaker 1: the benefit of that expert guidance, but he still felt
Speaker 1: strongly that it was worth talking to the SEC. He'd
Speaker 1: read up on the responsibility that a fund like Rothenberg
Speaker 1: Ventures has two investors who have given it money, he
Speaker 1: felt it could be fraud if Rothenberg wasn't using the
Speaker 1: money in a way that he had told investors it
Speaker 1: would be used. Once he made up his mind, Francisco
Speaker 1: went to the agency's website SEC dot Go slash Whistleblower,
Speaker 1: where there's a form to submit tips. It's a simple
Speaker 1: questionnaire where you describe the complaint and give the government
Speaker 1: some information about yourself, and there's a way to upload documents.
Speaker 1: In the complaint, he listed examples of how he felt
Speaker 1: funds were being misused so I submitted the forum. About
Speaker 1: a week later, I got an email from the staff
Speaker 1: attorney there. She asked me to go in. I went
Speaker 1: in for one meeting at their San Francisco office. UM,
Speaker 1: we talked about the forum. She had a print out
Speaker 1: of the website which I had everybody's picture on it.
Speaker 1: So we spent some time talking about each employee, what
Speaker 1: their role was. It was, you know, like a nice
Speaker 1: office building on Montgomery Street. It was just the two
Speaker 1: of us in that conference room for that meeting, and
Speaker 1: then later on in subsequent meetings or more people. Francisco
Speaker 1: had a lot riding on this. He knew that coming
Speaker 1: forward could cost him his job. If the SEC decided
Speaker 1: to do nothing against Rothenberg would still be worth it.
Speaker 1: Did you think that they could? You would be damaging
Speaker 1: your career in your future. Yeah, I knew that to
Speaker 1: some extent. I would be damaging my career. Why do
Speaker 1: you say, thatt, I'm just so sure that it was
Speaker 1: the right thing to do that, you know, Uh, it
Speaker 1: was worth that price that I'd have to pay. After
Speaker 1: that first meeting with the SEC, Francisco went back to
Speaker 1: work like nothing was different. He began to live this
Speaker 1: somewhat double life. While working like normal, he was also
Speaker 1: corresponding with SEC sharing documents with them. Another information about Rothenburg.
Speaker 1: Getting access to these documents wasn't difficult. Francisco was in
Speaker 1: charge of it T at Rothenburg Ventures, so he had
Speaker 1: access to all kinds of things that others didn't like
Speaker 1: financial reports, email logs, and investor information. He'd copy them
Speaker 1: onto a thumb drive and then send them to the
Speaker 1: SEC via email later from his house. Did you feel
Speaker 1: paranoying a little bit? Yeah, but I just didn't mention
Speaker 1: it to anybody, and um, I didn't feel that different.
Speaker 1: This double life didn't go on for long. A big
Speaker 1: turning point came just a few days later when he
Speaker 1: told the SEC that Rothenburg Ventures was making some changes
Speaker 1: to its I T systems and some of the email
Speaker 1: accounts were being deleted. This was in July of last year,
Speaker 1: soon after the SEC sent an order to Rothenberg Ventures
Speaker 1: telling them to not delete any records. It was the
Speaker 1: first time that the firm knew it was in the
Speaker 1: SEC's cross hands. And then Francisco got a message to
Speaker 1: come to a meeting with two senior executives at the
Speaker 1: firm Mike Rothenberg wasn't there. I was doing my work
Speaker 1: and then one of them sent me a text message
Speaker 1: and he said that he had an I T problem
Speaker 1: that he needed help with, so could I make sure
Speaker 1: I was in the office in a few minutes and
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, sure, and then I think about half
Speaker 1: an hour went by, and then he came by and
Speaker 1: got me. I was sitting sitting out of couch in
Speaker 1: the main office there, and then he took me um
Speaker 1: into what was really Mike's office but wasn't in the
Speaker 1: office that day, just a small office by itself off
Speaker 1: that man room. And what happened? So his first question,
Speaker 1: UM was he said, UM, so we've noticed that you've
Speaker 1: been doing some government related searches and I didn't say
Speaker 1: anything to that. And then he said did anybody tell
Speaker 1: you to do that? And I said I'm not going
Speaker 1: to answer that question. And then he said, well you're
Speaker 1: terminated effective immediately, um, and then long awkward pause, and
Speaker 1: then he said do you have anything to say? And
Speaker 1: I said, um, I have some personal lot ends of
Speaker 1: my desk a should grab and then he has started
Speaker 1: me to get that stuff and then out of the building.
Speaker 1: How did you feel after that, were you said, did
Speaker 1: you cry? Were you angry? I was? I was angry,
Speaker 1: like my heart was pounding. Um, it's mainly angry. Why
Speaker 1: were you angry? That was unfair? Like you can't terminate
Speaker 1: what's the blower? Like that? Um? And this was immediately
Speaker 1: after they got a document preservation order from the SEC.
Speaker 1: That's probably what that's probably that's why they're suspicious. The
Speaker 1: SEC has declined to comment about the case, but tech
Speaker 1: Crunch reported Rothenberg Ventures is being investigated for wire fraud,
Speaker 1: bank fraud, and breach of fiduciary duty in law suits
Speaker 1: from investors and employees. It's been alleged that Mike Rothenberg
Speaker 1: used money intended for the startups for his own benefit,
Speaker 1: it to support his own lifestyle, and Francisco learned from
Speaker 1: emails he had downloaded from the firm that at one point,
Speaker 1: Mike Rothenberg was paying himself about one million dollars, which
Speaker 1: is a huge amount for a relatively small firm, but
Speaker 1: Rothenberg was also struggling to manage it all. Last year,
Speaker 1: Rothenberg needed to provide documents and tax information and some
Speaker 1: return on investment to investors, and according to Francisco, and
Speaker 1: some media reports the money wasn't there. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: is a little bit complicated, but stick with us. The
Speaker 1: records show that River Studios, which if you remember, is
Speaker 1: one of the virtual reality businesses founded by Mike Rothenberg
Speaker 1: this started, received two million dollars from an investor. The
Speaker 1: same day, River Studios transferred one point seven million dollars
Speaker 1: to Mike Rothenberg's personal account. Also on that same day,
Speaker 1: Mike Rothenberg transferred once again one point seven million dollars
Speaker 1: from his own account to the Rothenburg Ventures account. According
Speaker 1: to Francisco, that gave Rothenberg Ventures the money to meet
Speaker 1: the deadline of the other investors. By the way, that
Speaker 1: investor who wired the two million has now sued Rothenberg.
Speaker 1: The lawsuit alleges that Rothenberg co mingled the bank accounts
Speaker 1: of his various entities, essentially treating the accounts of those
Speaker 1: businesses as as personal accounts. By the second half of
Speaker 1: last year, employees Quentin mass and a class action lawsuit
Speaker 1: is working its way through the courts. It alleges that
Speaker 1: staffers weren't paid. Another former employee has sued for more
Speaker 1: than a hundred thousand dollars that alleges Rothenberg didn't repay
Speaker 1: for business charges that have been put on a credit card.
Speaker 1: American Express is also sued for unpaid charges. I knew
Speaker 1: Mike Rothenberg a touch when I did that story back
Speaker 1: in so I reached out to him about Francisco and
Speaker 1: to get his side of the story. He didn't respond,
Speaker 1: but a person who works for a New York PR
Speaker 1: firm that specializes in crisis management and image rehabilitation reached out.
Speaker 1: He told me Mike wouldn't be available for an interview
Speaker 1: given the ongoing investigations in lawsuits Adam did the spokesman
Speaker 1: comment at all about Francisco where the allegations made by
Speaker 1: him and in the lawsuits. He disputed Francisco's allegation that
Speaker 1: he was fired for speaking with SEC. He said that
Speaker 1: Francisco had already given notice that he was leaving. Francisco
Speaker 1: says this is not true. The spokesman also pointed out
Speaker 1: that Francisco had this run in with authorities for the
Speaker 1: bitcoin exchange. He was implying that undermines his credibility. But
Speaker 1: what about the core allegations about misusing money. The spokesman
Speaker 1: declined to comment about the specifics. But Rothenberg did post
Speaker 1: a Facebook law I video earlier this year to explain.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I just wanna answer
Speaker 1: head on which I which I have done to the press,
Speaker 1: but they have not published it, and I want to
Speaker 1: be sure I'm very clear about this is the question
Speaker 1: I've had is you know, have you taken any money improperly?
Speaker 1: And the answer is no. And I've said that before
Speaker 1: and and uh it continues to that message continues to
Speaker 1: knock it out. There is clearly as it should. And
Speaker 1: another one is that have we made any investments without
Speaker 1: investor permission? We haven't. We have not made any investments
Speaker 1: without investor permission. For those kinds of rumors going quickly,
Speaker 1: there has to be very responsible reporting and um, there
Speaker 1: has to be fair and balance reporting. And there's a
Speaker 1: very big um. There's a very big weight on the
Speaker 1: shoulders of reporters because those um that particular group of people.
Speaker 1: The video goes on and in it he spends a
Speaker 1: lot of time blaming the media for bias coverage. Adam,
Speaker 1: you spoke to a few professors to better understand what
Speaker 1: kind of trouble that Mike Rothenberg and his firm might
Speaker 1: be in What I learned is the SEC has been
Speaker 1: pretty vigilant in protecting whistleblowers, including bringing actions against those
Speaker 1: who retaliate. So that means it will be pretty difficult
Speaker 1: for Rothenberg to come after Francisco for going to the SEC. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I also learned that Rothenberg could be in hot water,
Speaker 1: especially for what appears to be mismanagement of funds. Like
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier, fidiciary duty is the bedrock of finance.
Speaker 1: It's that trust between an investor and a person like
Speaker 1: Rothenberg who's investing that money on their behalf. Do you
Speaker 1: think there's a risk of jail time here? People I
Speaker 1: spoke with didn't think so, but there's definitely a possibility
Speaker 1: of financial penalties. And even beyond that, Mike Rothenberg's reputations
Speaker 1: and tatters. Now that's right, and Rothenberg was this really
Speaker 1: ambitious venture capitalist, but now that the firm is a
Speaker 1: bare bone staff and the reputation has really been hurt.
Speaker 1: In addition to speaking with the SEC, Francisco also began
Speaker 1: communicating with a few journalists about what he'd been finding
Speaker 1: at Rothenburg, under the condition that they wouldn't name him.
Speaker 1: At that point, while the firm's big spending and lavish
Speaker 1: events were well known, the internal turmoil had been largely
Speaker 1: kept under wraps. But in the months after that, several
Speaker 1: very tough stories came out chronicling Rothenberg's questionable management of funds.
Speaker 1: Francisco says that he never regretted the decisions he made,
Speaker 1: but it did take a toll. After he says he
Speaker 1: was fired, he made a last minute decision to join
Speaker 1: some friends going on a seven day hike in Sweden.
Speaker 1: On the walks, he talked about the ordeal with Justin Chen,
Speaker 1: a friend who's also a software engineer. It's sort of that,
Speaker 1: and I realized that, oh, he wants to leave this
Speaker 1: city because he's worried about this. The Splice he was
Speaker 1: working at where he was terminated. Uh, I got the
Speaker 1: sense he was worried about it about like Mike Rothenberg
Speaker 1: coming after him for a while, like physically. Justin says
Speaker 1: that even though this hasn't been easy for Francisco, he's
Speaker 1: in a much better position than most software engineering jobs
Speaker 1: are in big demand, and he'll likely have an easier
Speaker 1: time finding another job than somebody else might at Francisco's apartment,
Speaker 1: there's a messy bookshelf with some tea packets, notebooks, a
Speaker 1: few fantasy books, and on the top shelf we found
Speaker 1: one called The Whistleblower's Handbook, a step by step guide
Speaker 1: to doing what's right and protecting yourself. Francisco said that
Speaker 1: he actually found the book only after he had gone
Speaker 1: through this whole experience of being a whistleblower himself, and
Speaker 1: he said he wished that he had read the book
Speaker 1: before approaching the SEC. Now he thinks more people will
Speaker 1: be coming forward in Silicon Valley. He says he hopes
Speaker 1: to inspire others to step up. Part it's a critical
Speaker 1: mask thing. Once you have a few of those stories
Speaker 1: out there, it's easier for more people to do it.
Speaker 1: And then also I think that people are getting more
Speaker 1: fed up with the treatment, Like I feel like Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley is more unethical now than it was a few
Speaker 1: years ago. People are responding to that. And what why
Speaker 1: why do you think that? Um? I feel like, just
Speaker 1: because Silicon Valley's doing so well, it's attracting, you know,
Speaker 1: more more bad people who wouldn't have come here ten
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. People who were in it for the money,
Speaker 1: people in it for the easy money. Yeah. Francisco is
Speaker 1: now eight and he's working on a startup idea and
Speaker 1: email security program for businesses. He continues to work with
Speaker 1: the SEC and says he's available to be a witness
Speaker 1: in any of the lawsuits pending against Rothenburg. He also
Speaker 1: says he's been applying for some jobs. He's invariably asked
Speaker 1: about his experience at Rothenburg. In one instance, he told
Speaker 1: them about his role blowing the whistle just to see
Speaker 1: what the response was. He said there was a bit
Speaker 1: of nervous laughter, and then he didn't get a call back.
Speaker 1: And that's it for this week's Decrypted. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: If you work at a company where you suspect wrongdoing,
Speaker 1: get in touch with us. You can record a voice
Speaker 1: message and send it to Decrypted at Bloomberg dot net
Speaker 1: or I'm on Twitter at Satriano send me a direct message,
Speaker 1: and I'm at Akio seven. If you haven't already, please
Speaker 1: subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts. While
Speaker 1: you're there, please leave us a rating and a review.
Speaker 1: This really helps more listeners find their show. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by Pio Gadkari, Liz Smith, and Magnus Hendrickson.
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