I was recently left a company that I believed was created based on entrepreneurship, hard work, and a way to help parents with special needs children that have autism. Turns out the whole business idea was all stolen during a summer internship.
The founder of this autism company tells this story to investors, employees and family's on how he created his ABA company in late 2019. When he graduated from college with a masters in chemical engineering, he found himself unsure of what he wanted to do after college. His girlfriend at the time was working for a large ABA company and would complain about all the pit falls and inconsistencies of the company which would negatively impact a child's ability to receive quality and life changing therapy. But due to a lack of alternative autism provider options, parents were stuck with the industry standard and the issues that came with it. With no business background he took the initiative to see if he could create his own ABA company that would address the common issues within the autism therapy industry. He would talk about the long nights he spent doing research, and reaching out to other business mentors to help him get his idea off the ground. Over time he was able to create a business which offered solutions to common issues within the industry such as providing; full time services (M-F, 9-5), paying all employees a salaried rate (industry standard was hourly), 401K/health benefits, free autism diagnosis with no obligation to enroll in our program (typical autism diagnosis runs $1,500-$4,000 and isn't usually covered by health insurance), etc. This allowed for employees to have a more secured job because in other companies, if a client cancelled, didn't show up, was sick, or on vacation, they wouldn't get paid. Most diagnosing providers had a wait list up to 2 years to see a professional, but we would be able to diagnosis a child within months all for free. This provided services to families in need of this scares resource especially after COVID shut many programs down. I would tell this story to potential family's interested in our program and even people interested in working for us to show how we were different from other providers/companies. I would also share this story to friends about the start-up that I was apart of straight out of college.
Over a short period of time, the company grew to multiple centers, has over 150+ employees and has plans to open more locations. From the outside everything seemed great, although behind the curtains there were always internal issues we had to deal with due to poor upper management within the centers, high turnover (over 200% in 2022), and a toxic work environment created by different employee cliques within the centers. Overtime I became frustrated with him and my supervisor over concerns that we were building a house of cards that could fall apart over the smallest problem if not addressed properly. All they wanted to focus on was opening new locations and used that as the main metric to determine how well the business was doing instead of focusing on creating stability and a foundation to build off of. It got to the point where I couldn't take the stress and decided to leave. After I left, a high up management person shared with me on how the company was actually started and why all the concerns I had that were never addressed when brought up. Everything then made more sense after.
Originally when he graduated with his masters degree, he took up a summer internship working for a brokerage company that oversaw business acquisitions. Coincidentally while his girlfriend was working for an ABA company, he was assigned a project to help review documents for an already established ABA company that had tens of location spanning across multiple states that was looking to acquire smaller ABA companies to continue their growth. When working on the project he ended up stealing all of the information about the large ABA company and all of their standard practices that made them who they are today. He took all of the insurance contacts the company used, how to maximize the billing potential with healthcare companies, as well as what was needed to build centers for himself. He took all of this and more and ran with it making it seem like all of those ideas were his own.
Once I found this out, it made sense of why he always turned a blind eye to the issues I would bring up because he could only replicate what he stole. He was never able to create a positive/inclusive culture around his business since those ideas weren't in the business plans he stole. Creating a business foundation based on lies propped up on popsicle sticks that could erode away at any point due to toxic work environments he would never address. Since leaving the corporate space I have learned about the stress everyone is going through in the back office since they had to take on my responsibilities and figure things out themselves since most of what I did I didn't write down and I kept most of my ideas on how to do things in my head or in personal notes. The person that told me all of this also shared how people are beginning to feel burnt out from being over worked and now wanting to leave since I left. All of this has put a sour taste in my mouth and has ruined the image of the company I helped build with him.
I am unsure if I should confront him about this and make him face the truth about his business and the lies it is based on or should I not disturbed the potential bee hive that could come with it? In the end I only wish for his success and the company's and I don't want to ruin our friendship we have built over the years, but I am disheartened by what I learned.