Like so many other high-flying Silicon Valley startups, Clinkle was supposed to ‘make the world a better place’.
Founded in 2011 by a guy barely out of his teens, the company picked up early buzz after proclaiming they would disrupt mobile payments. Or something.
Silicon Valley venture capital firms were apparently so impressed with the idea that they showered the company with an unprecedented level of cash.
(Given that investing in an early stage company is high-risk, investors might provide a few hundred thousand dollars in funding, at most. Clinkle raised $25 million.)
The company went on to burn through just about every penny of its investors’ capital.
There were even photos that surfaced of the 21-year old CEO literally setting bricks of cash on fire.
At the end of the farce, Clinkle never actually managed to build its supposedly ‘world-changing’ product, and the website is now all but defunct.
This is rapidly becoming a familiar story in Silicon Valley.
This post was published at Sovereign Man on April 26, 2017.
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