I’m writing about my brief experience with Artisse, an “AI” image generation app at the heart of the latest venture by the serial huckster William Wu (whose earlier efforts included SolChicks NFT and Catheon Gaming). My reason for doing so in a public forum is to warn potential investors and would-be employees of what I found to be an utterly toxic and unethical business environment which appeared specifically designed for failure.
I have 18-years of regional and global digital marketing strategy experience for blue chips, a MS degree in Data Science with a specialization in AI from Northwestern, I’m an advertising effectiveness awards judge and former winner and a certified AWS Cloud Practitioner. I spent two weeks working for Artisse before being let go in a “cull” with other senior people the week before they begun fundraising.
Nearly all of the following points below are supported with corresponding screenshots of group communications with senior leadership, others were stated during group or individual meetings.
Anyone considering investing in or working for William Wu or any of his ventures would do well to consider the following:
DUBIOUS ETHICS
- William claims to want to “revolutionize the advertising world” and “turn influencer marketing on its head” by licensing individuals to brands directly, yet in his own words on 8/24/2023 stated, “I don’t fucking care about licensing” and directs his staff and agencies to use celebrity photos without permission in order to “Go Viral”.
- This direction contradicts his own terms and conditions as stated in the app (that users are only permitted to upload images of themselves) and quite probably violates the terms and conditions of the App Store and Google Play, not to mention a variety of local laws.
- William has been relentless in insisting that his employees, many of whom live in countries where it is clearly illegal to do so, use unlicensed celebrity photos to drive attention to his app.
- There is no evidence that Artisse developed or owns the tech used to generate and process the images it sells. When faced with questions regarding the provenance of the tech, William responded in writing, “the only thing we are allowed to say is we have a proprietary model.” Proprietary to whom?
- There was a recent cull of senior staff the week before fundraising which is due to start. New employee contracts stated that “real market-rate salaries” would begin as well as “equity participation” once fundraising had occurred.
- App store reviews have been incentivized amongst contract workers through in-app credits, likely violating app store terms and conditions.
INAPPROPRIATE AND JUVENILE BUSINESS PRACTICES - The entire company of 60+ employees is managed via WhatsApp, with communications happening around the clock, despite time zone differences. Employees have been threatened with firing by William in public forums for not turning up to meetings despite varying geographical time differences. In one case, that meeting was called at 1:45am, their local time.
- The app was launched on both the App Store and Google Play with serious functional flaws which were pointed out prior to “go live”.
- Many of the employees of William’s former failed “crypto” ventures maintain current roles with Artisse for which they are not qualified and receive outsize compensation. Other than those few with fundraising backgrounds or tech skills, none of these employees have a background that is transferable to this new company or comparable to newer employees engaged for low salaries ($1k-$2k monthly) and no equity. This strongly suggests to current employees that investor money is being shifted from one failed venture to the next to reward a loyal group who have moved from one to the next with William.
- William counts “likes” and “ROI” for influencer posts in real-time – Influencer posts might only be live for only 3 hours but would already be dismissed as “not worth it.”
- Leadership does not understand the basic mechanics of marketing and insists on using obsolete, ineffective and expensive tools like mass market e-mail blasts and untargeted in-app advertising and would rather copy competitor campaigns.
- The company has a record of not paying the influencers and content creators engaged to create and post content on the company’s behalf.
- William apparently has no understanding of AWS cloud storage and stated on a call, that he is currently paying $14 per new user (to “train” their model in their free trial state) in addition to a high cost for hosting the model in an instantly callable position. This demonstrates an absolute ignorance of tiered pricing models, horizontal and vertical scaling capabilities and seeks to buffer a failing product with investor cash – essentially throwing good money after bad.
- At William’s insistence, no planning or strategy is maintained beyond a 24-hour cycle. He openly admits this and insists that the only goal is to “Go Viral”. He does not demonstrate any coherent leadership or understanding of this goal or the development of value propositions and business strategies required to gain such a result.
ABUSIVE “LEADERSHIP” AND “VALUES” - Since there is no strategy or planning in evidence, new marketing tactics are implemented on 24-hour cycles because William “learned” something or something “went viral yesterday”. The marketing team was forced to change directions 4 times in 2 weeks. In each case, their efforts were derided by William as “shit”, “crap”, or “not working.”
- When William can’t understand something then clearly “no one else on the call” can understand it either and he will mock whoever presented the idea. In reality, many others can understand, as they have the related experience necessary to do their jobs.
- William uses ChatGPT to generate bizarre and fantasist campaign ideas and press releases about himself.
- William has stated on calls that he is not interested in becoming popular in India because “he’ll go bankrupt”, and only wants to “Go Viral in paying countries”.
- William has a habit of dropping “F bombs” on employees during calls and exploding violently on equipment in the room with him. It is perhaps fortunate that the entire operation works remote, although one doubts that sort of childish, bratty behavior would be tolerated in-person.
In my opinion, there is little hope for this company based on my experience with the way it is run. In my brief experience working with him, William Wu behaves like a drug-addled, spoiled child with zero respect, tolerance or inclination to learn from or trust the people he hires. I write this so no one is naïve about the intentions of this incapable, unethical and sociopathic CEO.
William claims to hold degrees from Wharton and LSE, and to have worked at McKinsey before starting many successful companies. All of this would be a great accomplishment for a 30 year-old, but beggars belief given his abusive behavior and demonstrated lack of understanding of marketing, ethics, AI, digital product launches, culture and basic business management and leadership functions.
William and other senior leaders from the failed “crypto” venture are not interested in building a successful product, brand or company, nor “revolutionizing advertising” but merely in getting another get-rich-quick scheme off the ground and in the public eye.