Quote Originally Posted by Pete View Post
Koehler was day-to-day but there was a self-described investment manager (Michael Carnuccio) who was raising the capital and interfacing with the big money guys.

I've seen the proformas that were sent out to investors and the numbers are insane. Like projecting someone like Jeni Carlson could bring in a sponsor for $35,000/month for her podcast and videocast. Plus, tens of thousands more a month for web ads driven by her content. Similarly, completely outrageous numbers were given for all the content providers.

They were also paying most the writers a guaranteed salary which was more than any had been making previously, which is why some quit their jobs. And they were promised that pay for 3 years.

This is complete craziness. The market price for digital advertising is very easy to determine just by getting rate sheets from some of the more success businesses in the area. I've done it myself. And I can tell you those ad rates are 50x market and then they projected that for all 20 or so creators.

Also, how do you expect to pay salaries from the jump?? You have no revenue.


They took this big chunk of money (turned out to be a loan, not an investment) and then burned through most of it in only a couple of months. And if they generated more than a few thousand dollars in revenue I'd be very surprised vs. the $1.5MM+ they spent in this short time.

My impression that Koehler was going on the projections of others and was way out of his depth.


I have to say absolutely everyone involved looks pretty bad in this situation. Nobody did even a cursory due diligence and if they had they would have quickly realized none of this was remotely realistic. Somebody put ridiculous numbers into a Powerpoint, went out and got a high-interest loan, and then everyone just followed him over the cliff.
This is the most insane part of all of this.
https://awfulannouncing.com/ringer/t...nvestment.html
"The Ringer charges between $25 and $50 for every 1,000 people who hear an ad on their podcasts."

Simmons is one of if not the largest sports podcaster.

Even if Sellout Crowd was valued as highly as The Ringer (they never would be), Jenni's show would need......1.4 MILLION people listening EACH episode for it to make sense on the ad buying side. Just spend the $35,000 on one of the largest podcasts in the world. And that's assuming Sellout could get the $25 per 1,000.

It's not an exact apples to apples comparison, but there weren't even in the same galaxy. Just insane.