The Story
A couple of years back I had the opportunity to run a Kickstarter campaign for an open source Linux project. We were a small team of 5 volunteers, under a now defunct company in Delaware, USA.
Thanks to the Stripe Accelerator program, we didn’t have to worry about setting up a company, nor bank accounts. Everything was taken care off, and finally, Stripe also waived all set-up fees. We only had to focus on what we do best: Gather some funding and develop a great Linux distribution!
Our Kickstarter launch went reasonably well, but our visitor / backer count soon started to decline, so we decided to hire a PR firm, to help us push this to the next level. With an initial deposit to cover the PR release (not outreach), we were ready to go, and hoping that this might get us back on top.
Unfortunately our visitor count never recovered and with little over $50k raised, we also missed our campaign goal. With no money left, and all private ressources drained, both the project and company were effectively dead, and our PR firm was left with an unpaid invoice.
Fast-Forward a couple of years, I discovered they are holding a grudge:
Meet Firecracker
Hint: The PR firm.
Today I’ve discovered a couple of gems about me, on the internet! It appears, someone is spending time and money on me. It’s not the classic sugar daddy kind of situation, and I haven’t received any candy or letters, but that’s certainly a first for me.
The website
First of all, it appears they have set-up a website for me: franzgeffke.com
Beautiful, isn’t it? While the headline implies, there has been a “history of cheating”, you won’t actually find much of a history here, but then again, they sat down, and made this website for me - they are paying for the domain too.
The picture is a little old, but ok. Can’t ask for everything, right?
The article
If that is not enough, they have also published a lengthy article, on a website called “AI directories”. I don’t have an AI company, but for some reason, they felt the need to list me there - I hope the other “AI” companies don’t mind.
The AI Directory is the web’s most comprehensive listing of artificial intelligence companies from around the world. Spanning machine learning, data analytics, vision generation and other emerging fields, the AI Directory is constantly growing as the field of artificial intelligence continues to expand.
You may check out the article here but I’ll include some of the best quotes below:
I’d stay far, far away from G&P Mutual Investment Fund
Apparently they have discovered my for fun Mutual Fund, which I used to keep track of theoretical earnings, across multiple cryptocurrencies. Everything was in Excel, but I published some graph under a hidden link on this website, to share with family and friends - I never actually completed it, so nobody has really seen it either.
You can find it here: Investment Fund
This was inspired by Melon coin’s crypto-fund platform! Though if I was serious, I probably wouldn’t put this on my private website?
We rarely resort to public shaming, but in a case as egregious as this, we felt it our duty to warn the business world.
This line is also quite beautiful. Really Trump-style! To summarize:
- They have written an article about me, on an AI? website
- They have registered a domain, and published a website about me
- They have produced a YouTube clip.
I really hope their clients aren’t paying for this.
Therefore, he believes that he is beyond the reach of the law. What he isn’t beyond the reach of is the power of the Internet to out scammers and cheats like him.
This is almost poetic. Who knows, they are a bunch of published authors too?
The man? behind all this
You can probably reach him at firecrackerpr.com or directly via info@firecrackerpr.com or 1-888-317-4687 ext. 702… If you had any questions or anything!