To get a sense of impact the original NYT reporting did, the first article revealing Ozy's shenanigans was posted on Sunday. (HN discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28666350 )
It took 5 days from publishing to a complete company shutdown.
Independently of Ozy, when I see the cascade of bad news for someone/something, I wonder about the timing: Why do all these stories come out at once, even though they've been true for years?
Some possibilities: Some people like to join the angry mob and pile on, stories become more interesting to the news publishers (e.g., what was yet another story about an abusive culture at some unknown company becomes much more interesting now that people care about Ozy), and people who might have hesitated previously now feel safe sharing their stories, now that Ozy is down and impotent.
It's an important question; the phenomenon, IME, has nothing to do with the validity of the target; it happens to good people too.
Probably the NYT article got a lot of views and obviously if that is the case you want to do a follow up.
Same for other news outlets, they want to jump on the train.
All of the sudden OZY employees and former OZY employees get bombarded with messages from journalists on Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook.
That's when people start to talk, and the story gets even bigger.
Often journalists at several different news organizations have been independently investigating aspects of the same basic story for months, without being aware of each other. They've been trying to cultivate additional sources and verify facts to make a really compelling story. Then when one journalist publishes the rest have to rush to publish as well or end up looking irrelevant. Old news.
Usually it’s because people are afraid of exposing someone who is perceived to be powerful and important until someone else goes first. Look at Theranos, look at the #MeToo movement, look at Enron or Madoff.
Carlos Watson set himself out as a very powerful person who interviewed lots of famous and powerful people, had powerful investors, and had hoodwinked a lot of credible institutions (he was supposed to host the News & Documentary Emmys THIS week), it’s completely reasonable for people who work at a place like this to fear reprisal in finding other jobs, and thus choose to stay silent. In fact, staying quiet in a lot of these cases is the most rational choice. The people at Goldman Sachs and the VCs had little reason to speak out, easier to just quietly cut ties rather than face questions about why you backed a scammer to begin with.
It often takes someone who can’t be hurt by the person in power (or can’t be hurt as much), usually backed by an institution that is more/equally powerful as the subject, to break the proverbial dam. In this case, it was Ben Smith and The New York Times. Whatever anyone thinks of The Times, its reputation and stature as an institution is nearly unmatched (The New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal have similar reputations), it employs rigorous fact checkers for this kind of story, and the columnist in this story, has an excellent reputation and his own Rolodex of powerful sources and allies. As soon as he tore the lid off, it was safe for others to come forward.
One former employee went from an anonymous source to Fortune to on-the-record with CNN in less than 24 hours. My own experience tells me that the source was willing to go on the record with CNN after it became clear that Ozy/Watson/Rao was no longer in a position to harm her.
Look at Theranos. The Wall Street Journal was one of the only institutions in the world that could break that story. John Carreyrou had the backing of his editors, but Theranos tried to stop publication, first through thinly veiled threats by their legal counsel (led by the incredibly powerful David Boies) and going as far for Elizabeth Holmes to try to intervene with the owner of Journal (and Theranos investor) Rupert Murdoch. No smaller outlet or whistleblower could have done if. In fact, one of Carreyrou's sources, Tyler Schulz, was threatened by lawyers, his parents nearly bankrupt in legal bills, and cast-out by his grandfather (Theranos board member George Schulz). Imagine if Tyler's parents hadn’t had $500,000 to spend on legal bills or if he hadn’t talked to someone at The Wall Street Journal, does anyone think that story would have come out?
NBC News rejected Ronan Farrow's reporting on Harvey Weinstein, even though Farrow is famous and well-connected, leading him to take his reporting to The New Yorker. The Times was independently pursuing the story too, and the two outlets shared the Pulitzer, but the fact that NBC News turned down a story from a reporter they paid lots of money (and who at one time had a show on one of their networks), shows just how difficult it is to sometimes speak truth to power.
> It's an important question; the phenomenon, IME, has nothing to do with the validity of the target; it happens to good people too.
This can be true, but I think it is less true than you imply. Yes, everyone can enjoy a good pile-on, for good people or bad. But typically when these sort of under-the-radar stories break through, the reason all the stories come out at once is that people were afraid of being unhireable by speaking out against someone in power.
> NBC News rejected Ronan Farrow's reporting on Harvey Weinstein, even though Farrow is famous and well-connected, leading him to take his reporting to The New Yorker.
Because Weinstein was threatening to take Matt Lauer down with him if they broke the story.
I wonder if the company was internally on the brink of collapse for a long time, but could perpetually keep faking it as long as they could keep funding coming in? And then the NYTimes popped the veneer and forced an immediate collapse? Or is that totally off base.
I think the seriousness of their fraud is what prompted the collapse. It’s one thing to cook viewership numbers and another to impersonate a YouTube exec to defraud Goldman Sachs of $40mn. I guess they got so used to fraud they didn’t realise they’d crossed a line, and the resulting scrutiny finally did them in.
> It’s one thing to cook viewership numbers and another to impersonate a YouTube exec to defraud Goldman Sachs of $40mn
And it's an entirely separate thing for the CEO to defend said fraud as a mental health oopsie, and then the chairman of the Board to defend the CEO for running a forgiving ship.
Clown car, front to back. Every one of the people involved should be investigated, in their activities pertaining to Ozy Media as well as everything else they're supposedly involved with and/or overseeing.
OZY raised $35M in 2019, totalling $70M in total funding at that point.
In April 2020 the total raised amount grew to $83M.
The company supposedly made $50M of revenue in 2020 and claimed to be profitable.
So from here, why did they try to raise more? Probably because the revenues and profit were not real.
In February 2021 the company tried to defraud Goldman Sachs of $40M.
I've read from another source that OZY was able to raise even more money 2 months after having failed to defraud Goldman Sachs. The total amount of money raised could thus be in the 100 millions.
According to this story [0], a former employee was advised by a doctor to take time off after a panic attack. Samir Rao (the guy whose 'mental health crisis' made him impersonate an executive), called up the hospital saying he was the HR Director, demanding to look at the employee's medical records.
It took 5 days from publishing to a complete company shutdown.