Mike Rothenberg drops the mic on the media!
Seems like everyday my tech news feeds are hit with a new Rothenberg Ventures has f'ed up posts.
It's almost like tech journalism has always been looking for someone to make a tabloid martyr out of and Mike Rothenberg fits the bill with almost Kanye West like precision.
Young, brash, Cinderella story. It almost comes across as a hip hop lyric about loving you on top but hating you when they can. From Rothenberg facing zoning issues to employee lawsuits there is always something to read about about Mike. I felt I too should also do a post since I am a blog and all.
Well actually Mike Rothenberg himself decided to finally address some of these media issues via a Facebook post yesterday.
In the video Mike says he has not taken any money improperly as well as stating that Rothenberg Ventures never made any investments without investor permission.
Those are two of the major (among others) claims that the media has put out. Mike specifically calls out the media including one of the biggest outlets to push the story, TECH CRUNCH. Mike goes onto say some of these stories have been liable and slander. Mike even goes on to say that Tech Crunch lives for Drama and even has a section dedicated to this.
Look I am barely a member of the press so I am going to let the man speak for himself like he wants to in the video below. I am going to say this guy has balls of steel for recently changing Frontier Tech Ventures back to Rothenberg Ventures. Thug Life.
What the media has had to say in the past...INCLUDING yesterday.
http://thehustle.co/rothenberg-ventures
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/18/at-rothenberg-ventures-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-virtual-gatsby/
and here is a list of WILD spending that Rothenberg allegedly did
- Hired a racecar driver and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain and transport her car to events
- Sponsored actor Chace Crawford’s birthday party and produced a video for Coldplay
- Spent $200k on a suite at the Super Bowl and $2k a month on private jets
- Launched an annual Founders Field Day at AT&T Park that was extremely over the top (and inspired the scene in “Silicon Valley”)
The Questions that CatsAndVR.com has about all this.
- Was most of the extravagant expenditures listed actually sponsored....Founders Field Day was almost entirely covered by sponsors and did not come out of Rothenberg's pockets.
- Why was Rothenberg Ventures corporate counsel terminated for cause in July, before all this news came out?
- How does CFO David Hasse let all of this go under his nose and says he is owed around 100,000 in company expenses he supposedly paid for?
- How is Mike Rothenberg still the CEO of the company?
- How come the feds have yet to find anything illegal that he did yet?
- Where are David Hasse, Geoffrey Rapoport, Brandon Farwell, and Justin Grooms now? And did they try to unravel the company from within in a skunkworks kind of operation.
- Why am I asking these questions?
The last one is because I am a contrarian and don't like to believe what I am told in the tabloids. Really in the end I am wondering how did this all fall apart and who killed Rothenberg Ventures.
Was Mike destined to fall or be the fall guy? I am way too low in all of this to really make a clear answer but I do look at the information and have lots of questions.
Really what will happen to River and the IP and investments that they made? This in the end may be an early warning for the VR community to not necessarily buy something for face value no matter how luxurious and hyped it is.
Mike Rothenberg this one is dedicated to you!
