Newchip Former Employee Review: Smoke and Mirrors – Trump Univers… masquerading as an accelerator and investment fund | Indeed.

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Newchip
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Newchip
Newchip Former Employee Review

1.0
Smoke and Mirrors – Trump University masquerading as an accelerator and investment fund
Former Employee (Former Employee) - Austin, TX - September 13, 2020

In my entire work experience, I have never spoken ill of a former employer on any public forum. Out of sadness and deep regret, I am forced to make an exception. My
experience at Newchip was so overwhelming that I feel obligated to speak out as a public service announcement to warn potential business partners and future job applicants.

The Good:

-I used to have some great coworkers. Most rank-and-Dle employees at Newchip were decent, smart, and hardworking people I enjoyed working alongside and getting to
know over the last year. They worked hard and sacriDced time, health, and wealth (many of us can easily make higher salaries and enjoy better work-life balances elsewhere)
which was not fully appreciated by management from what I can tell.

The Bad:

-Virtually all my former coworkers have quit or been let go. I have never worked for a company that has experienced almost 100% turnover in less than a year (which is a major
red Mag, Strike 1). There is no one on the current Newchip team who has been there for more than a year. All the original co-founders have left except for the current CEO.

-The current CEO is not a leader. Period. He talks a big game but has nothing to show for it. Think a 27 year-old Donald Trump. In my entire time at Newchip, not once have I
seen him accept personal responsibility for a failure or setback. Instead, he always shifted the blame to others. He makes frequent derogatory remarks and gossips about
current and former coworkers like an adolescent. Over the past year, I witnessed many acts that clearly cross professional and ethical boundaries. Here are a few examples:

-Calling out and publicly humiliating an employee on the company Slack.

-Threatening termination or reduced wages to coerce employees to work longer hours.
-Showing clips from ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ to train sales. (Con artists imitate other con artists…)
-Texting teammates at very late hours.
-Asking a new female employee on her Drst day to go over to his house to feed his cat, which clearly made her feel very uncomfortable.

I can go on but there’s too many to list. The CEO’s unprofessional, unethical, if not outright illegal behavior (which can be attested to by many other ex-employees if this ever
ends up in court) is embedded into the everyday work environment at Newchip and is the main source of the company’s dysfunction.

No company with a functioning HR department (Newchip does not have one presently, nor should you expect it to have one in the future) would tolerate such a person on
their team, let alone executive leadership. Newchip’s current CEO is a b-school case study of what a leader should not be or do.

-The company has no board of directors, legal counsel, compliance, or HR department that can control the CEO or provide any kind of check and balance. Another red Mag,
Strike 2. As a result, the CEO makes many decisions arbitrarily without any kind of input, with consequences that fall on rank-and-Dle employees who are not told until last

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Newchip Former Employee Review: Smoke and Mirrors – Trump Univers… masquerading as an accelerator and investment fund | Indeed.com 4/10/24, 12:48 PM

minute (if at all) or consulted in any way. Processes are not followed, let alone get documented because of the CEO’s erratic behavior, top-down micromanagement, and
arbitrary actions without reference to data or careful deliberation with teammates.

-The company is drowning in debt. Management will not be honest about its Dnancial state or take basic actions to avoid unnecessary spending ($400 headphones?!
Seriously!?). At one point, the company tried to brand itself as an “incubator” and lease out extra rooms (that business model, “Newchip Labs,” failed miserably) to make some
extra money out of desperation. In addition, management couldn’t make payroll on time on multiple occasions despite employees being paid way below market rate. Final red
Mag, Strike 3 and you’re out.

The Ugly:

-The company’s accelerator business model is all smoke and mirrors.

i. The fund exists in name only. If you think you’ll be introduced to real VCs at Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, or Founders Fund, you are gravely mistaken and being
conned. Once upon a time, Newchip had an app with investors. Those investors were everyday (mostly inactive) Joe Schmoe users. They won’t be writing you $10 million
checks.

ii. Anyone applying to the accelerator should question the credentials of the management team. As far as I’m aware, no one on the team, including the CEO, has worked at an
investment bank, big law, or venture capital Drm on Wall Street or Silicon Valley. No one has held a C-level position or was a department head in the past at a Fortune 500
company. No one, including the CEO, has had a multimillion dollar exit.

“Venture Associates” are college students or recent grads with no VC or professional Dnance background. “Venture Associates” are essentially salesmen. They read from a
script and pressured to use hardball sales tactics to lure in and collect fees from gullible, desperate founders who think they are applying to a world-class, exclusive accelerator
(it’s not). They are given impossible sales quotas with little to no training. If you ever interacted with Newchip, don’t be surprised to be speaking to many dikerent young faces
within short periods. The turnover among “Venture Associates” is massive. Of course, the CEO can replace them endlessly with desperate young people eager for a job, any
job.

iii. The CEO uses automated emails and LinkedIn messages to mass-spam founders and entrepreneurs as lead generation for the accelerator. That’s Newchip’s “marketing
department”: The CEO and all his various spam accounts. At one point, he made interns to reply to his many messages (using templated canned responses of course) in his
multiple inboxes from founders who are smart enough to ask basic due diligence questions.

-Hiring/Dring is the most unprofessional and irresponsible I’ve ever witnessed in any organization. Loyal, hardworking employees are dismissed without a performance review
or a severance package the minute they no longer serve the CEO’s purposes or start pushing back on his behavior. The callousness in how he throws teammates under the bus
is utterly appalling.

On the other hand, new stak are brought in at random intervals and without proper vetting by current employees. Again, the CEO makes these hiring/Dring decisions
arbitrarily.

The near 100% turnover alone will prevent Newchip from ever developing a sustainable culture, let alone become a legitimate company with a real product and mature
leadership. As Peter Thiel wrote in ‘Zero to One,’ “A startup messed up at its foundation cannot be Dxed.” Newchip is a living example.

Warning to current Newchip employees: The CEO sees you as disposable. You will almost certainly receive the same cruel treatment if you haven’t already.

Advice to the CEO:

You need to grow up. Enough gossiping about other people behind their backs. Just STOP with it. It shows a complete lack of maturity and reMects very poorly on you.

Manage and master yourself before managing others. Stop being a hypocrite. Seriously. If you can’t do that, step down and sell whatever’s left of Newchip’s assets (if there

ever was any). Find an honest line of work. Your awful reputation is an open secret here in the Austin startup community. - less

Pros
Decent coworkers; got to make a dikerence helping some companies grow

Cons
Awful and immature CEO with toxic behavior and shady past

Ratings by category

1.0 Work/Life Balance

1.0 Compensation/BeneNts

1.0 Job Security/Advancement

1.0 Management

1.0 Culture

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Same location
2.0
His leadership is horrible making a toxic workplace!!
Sales Executive (Former Employee) - Austin, TX - March 2, 2024

In my opinion, the reason behind the employees being miserable, always stressed, and awfully frustrated is because of the CEO! His leadership is horrible making a toxic
workplace!!!

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Same location
1.0
Very frustrating dealing with the dense management
Sales Representative (Former Employee) - Austin, TX - February 10, 2024

It's extremely frustrating to deal with the management because the managers seems to be dense and incapable of communicating properly and clearly. Either the leadership is
full of incompetent and inept people or it's Dlled with the most indikerent and careless managers. Either way, none of these options give me hope.

Pros
No pros in this hopeless company.

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Same location
1.0
Forget genuine connections, just close the deal.
Sales Representative (Former Employee) - Austin, TX - January 22, 2024

Forget about building genuine relationship with your clients. At Newchip, it's all about hitting those numbers, baby. They churn through leads like a cokee machine on
overdrive, expecting you to turn every conversation into a sale. It felt more like peddling used cars than helping people achieve their business dreams.

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Overall rating

3.7
Based on 135 reviews

5 87

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Newchip Former Employee Review: Smoke and Mirrors – Trump Univers… masquerading as an accelerator and investment fund | Indeed.com 4/10/24, 12:48 PM

5 87

4 0

3 0

2 14

1 34

Ratings by category
3.7 Work/Life Balance

3.7 Compensation/BeneNts

3.7 Job Security/Advancement

3.7 Management

3.7 Culture

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