Stéphane Ducasse <stephane.ducasse@...> writes: > > Hi guys > > I do not like to do that but in the past we got problems with Merik Voswinkel. So I would like to warm you against > him. Several of you got approached and my advice is run away. Here are some simple facts that happened to us. > > Stef > > From Lukas: > > Starting in 2007 Merik contacted various people from the Smalltalk community offering them to take part in > his startup. His projects and goals constantly changed and nobody quite followed what he wanted to do. > When he discussed with me it was a mash up of Pharo, Seaside, Pier, Cola, and Croquet all running on some > custom cloud hardware ... > > Merik was working together with a "fake" research institute that only existed as a website. I also learned > that Merik is broke and lives from support of the dutch government. Merik aggressively applies for > venture capital and writes huge proposals with weird ideas. On some of these proposals (that I found on the > web) he added Avi Bryant and myself as key team members (with picture, bio and all), even if we both never > accepted to do anything with him. > > From marcus: > We got a note from the local organzier that a "Venture Capitalist" wanted to attend ESUG and we could even use > his Boat for the social event. But strangely, this Venture Capitalist was not able to pay 400 EUR to attend. > But he was not able to say that. (we later learned that he is living of social wellfare... so it would have > been no problem to get him a free entrance). So he offered to make videos. With very expensive > "Professional" equipment. > > Later it turned out this kamera was actually the one of the guy organizing the remote croquet talk, and he got > somehow pissed too because Merik promised him something for the camera use... > > Of course, Merik did have to operate the "Professional" Camera himself (not often, maybe a day he did?). We > had to threaten him violently to get the completely useless tapes. (which are in some strange format and unprocessed). > > so, that's Merik. > > He was sending around "Business Plans" to people using team members that never agreed. For example Lukas > was used like that. If Lukas does not object, I can send these "professional" business plans.. so you can > ROFL, too. > (Lukas an me did a course right at that time about venture funding: http://venturelab.ch/, so we know a > little bit about these things...) > > > Then people could hack his machine on his seaside hosting because the ports were open so :) > No, he was running seaside with development tools enabled. He is completely clueless. > > So pay attention. > > Stef >
Please send me an example of one of his businessplans. It seems he is trying to start something up in the Netherlands and I would like to make my own assesment. best regards >
