by amacneil on 3/17/25, 1:03 PM with 135 comments
by mattzito on 3/17/25, 3:19 PM
There is extremely damning evidence that this unnamed individual ("D.S.") in Ireland was acting at the behest of Deel senior leadership, including:
- the COO of deel reached out to a rippling payroll manager on linkedin to recruit them. The rippling employee didn't respond. Shortly thereafter, D.S. pulled up that employees personnel record in the HR system that has their unlisted phone number. Shortly after THAT, the COO of deel reached back out to that employee via WhatsApp and that phone number.
- The information was about to publish a story about Deel potentially violating sanctions. New information in the article was that at least one of the customers involved was a company called "tinybird". No one at rippling was aware that this company even existed, but a week BEFORE the article came out, but after the reporter had been asking questions of Deel, D.S. started searching Slack for "tinybird" (and there were no other searches of "tinybird" across the whole company)
- Around the same time, the reporter for the information reached out to rippling and had internal Rippling slack messages about potential similar sanctions violations. A short time before that happened, D.S. was suddenly searching for "russia", "sanctions", "iran", etc.
- There was an email between D.S. and the ceo of Deel, along with an introduction to someone from the family VC fund.
- And then, of course, the honeypot - a fake channel, fake chats from the Rippling CRO, but the chats had real stories that former Deel employees had alleged. Email sent to only the CEO of Deel, his dad/chairman of the board, and their GC. Just a short time later, D.S. was searching for the fake channel, trying to find it, adn trying to find these chat messages.
I'm sure the CEO will try to have plausible deniability, that it was someone else in his org that he delegated investigating these things to, he had no idea, etc. But if they can get D.S. to crack and share the details of what happened, I think it will be tough to toe that line.
by probably_wrong on 3/18/25, 9:19 AM
by skizm on 3/18/25, 2:06 PM
> On March 12, Rippling sought and obtained an order from Ireland’s High Court to seize the alleged spy’s phone. When served, the purported spy feigned compliance before “hiding in the bathroom and then fleeing the scene,” the complaint says.
by PhillyPhuture on 3/18/25, 3:50 PM
Y Combinator Andreessen Horowitz SV Angel General Catalyst Spark Capital Soma Capital Coatue Quiet Capital AltaIR Capital Elad Gil Franklin Templeton Alexis Ohanian Four Cities Capital Emerson Collective Justin Mateen Lachy Groom Neo Altimeter Capital Mubadala La Famiglia Nat Friedman Sinai Capital Partners Firebolt Ventures Y Combinator Continuity Fund Daniel Gross BAM Elevate Avichal Garg Incisive Ventures Ryan Petersen Darian Shirazi Counterpart Advisors Worklife Weekend Fund Recursive Ventures William Hockey Green Bay Ventures Esas Ventures Jeffrey Wilke Roosh Ventures Cem Garih Fresh Ventures Dara Khosrowshahi Nick Raushenbush Jeffrey Katzenberg Bouaziz & Partners Alexandre Scialom Ben Lang Vinay Hiremath Rex Salisbury Terrance McArthur Pierre Bi John Zimmer Anthony Schiller Talal Chedid Raed Malek
by theoryofx on 3/18/25, 4:06 PM
Sales driven companies are all corrupt and corrupting. This kind of espionage is common, as is outright bribery of buyers.
by gukov on 3/17/25, 6:48 PM
by pbiggar on 3/18/25, 10:33 AM
Simple rule of thumb is never trust an Israeli company with your data or your customers' data.
by nickphx on 3/18/25, 5:27 PM
by ridruejo on 3/17/25, 3:25 PM
by jeffdotdev on 3/18/25, 8:40 AM
Deel is just another tech company that thinks they're entitled to data, you're just a user to them. I hope Rippling wins, and that management team gets put in their place.
In the mean time, I'm back to setting up local entities. They took a great idea and ruined trust. When I called them on it they just gave me corporate gaslighting.
by anonu on 3/19/25, 2:16 AM
I've been on employer side of things and it seems like any exceptions to the rigid workflow breaks the entire process. Customer service is completely helpless in solving your problems. Bugs in the UI persist for years. Random emails asking you to complete tasks for long offboarded contractors.
What a load of junk.
by ksynwa on 3/18/25, 10:23 AM
by frankfrank13 on 3/17/25, 2:37 PM
by flas9sd on 3/18/25, 2:50 PM
by shadowtree on 3/18/25, 2:15 PM
Black ICE, netrunners and rogue AIs will soon be added to the mix.
Off to re-read Neuromancer, so far ahead of its time.
by jedberg on 3/18/25, 4:01 PM
by phpnode on 3/18/25, 1:16 AM
by pilingual on 3/18/25, 10:38 AM
They say they just admit smart people. So 3 friends from MIT get in to YC, and at the first office hours said friends tell the YC partners they are working on a startup that starts startups. Awkward.
by anonymoustrolol on 3/17/25, 8:56 PM
If the allegations are true, it's insane. But also feels a bit boy cried wolf.