You shouldn't just rely on 10ft. I'm in no denial about how messed up this situation has become, but the Tipsly situation is a little more nuanced than you've presented here, and can be read in multiple ways, including positive ways.
To expand on your info:
- The Tiplsy LLC is registered to a Tyler O'Rear email address, but the owner of that email is Ruby Larsen (who is also contracted with BRTV as social media influencer and has been hosting review videos in the US for BRTV with Shana Taylor - Ryan Seacrest's girlfriend)
- I've searched through all of Ruby's social media - she was in QLD working on app development with Shana in 2015
- Ruby worked at Connected Living as a developer (a social networking/services app for seniors)
- Her husband Doug O'Rear was/is a director at Connected Living and 33 etc
- Connected Living was also worked on by CH2 Solutions, a design/dev company in Boulder Colorado
- CH2 is owned by developers Jason Short and Kristi Short (both now part of BIG executive team)
- CH2 also worked on Tethered App (created by the O'Rears)
- A membership service for immediate access to exclusive bars and night clubs in Las Vegas, New York, DC, and Los Angeles. This app allowed its members to browse high end bars in their area and reserve table service at the most exclusive clubs. In addition, the app notified bouncers when a member was on premises so the member could skip the line and get immediate access into the club.
- CH2's Role: We were brought on early in the concept phase, and helped Tethered plan the solution from concept to creation of the app and integrated services to ensure the app functioned well. But beyond the development of the product, we helped Tethered plan for what comes next, and in their case, they were acquired by Connected Living in 2014.
Based on all of this info it would appear that through linking the Tethered and Connected Living tech the O'Rears and Ruby along with the Shorts have created an app tech that fits the Tipsly description which is being brought into the BIG ecosystem.
To your other points:
- Tipsly as a stand alone tech hasn't been launched yet, hence the lack of a website and the place holder UI images. This is less than ideal, but considering it hasn't launched yet, isn't necessarily a red flag
- The acquisition price. Yep, seemed too high. But it does appear BIG got an extensive dev team and app tech that has been in dev since 2014 that combines multiple previously launched app techs
- Non-escrow, yep also weird. However we've gone over the trading in the periods after the 3B and it appears those 3m shares weren't offloaded, so are likely still held by developers.
BIG is a mess, but Tipsly isn't necessarily the blatant red flag it appears based on your info.
Sorry for the late reply, caught up with other things. Interested to hear your thoughts on this additional info.
