Lack of integrity was GrabGas’ downfall

Photo credit: supergranto / 123RF Stock Photo

There are small lies, and there are big lies.

Small lies are harmless. It’s thanking someone for her feedback even though you think it’s worthless. It’s complimenting someone’s looks even though you think they’re a fashion disaster. It’s the stuff you don’t say to avoid hurting a person.

The big lies are the ones that kill. Stuff you don’t want your mother to know about. GrabGas made a bunch of big lies. They were caught, and paid dearly for it by having their investor pull out.

The whole situation started as a humongous miscommunication between the CTO Julian and the rest of the founding team. It then escalated into a tell-all blog post by him in which he made many allegations.

Chief among those were claims that GrabGas lied to the press, and lied to investors during a pitching session.

GrabGas had many chances to refute the allegations that they lied. But they did not.

Granted, founder Sean Hoo apologized to everyone for what happened. But I found this section of the note vacuous:

We also want to apologize to the media for giving the perception that we intended to mislead or lying (sic) about our data. We at GrabGas would like to assure that we never have any intention to mislead the media in the first place. Our data cannot be revealed fully to protect the interest of our key shareholders and investors.

It’s excuse after excuse. If you don’t want to reveal data to the public, that’s fine. Your response to the media when asked should be “no comment,” not concoct fake numbers about your progress.

It would appear that their apology is insincere. How else would you explain Sean’s Facebook post, which said this: “We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lose.”

And judging by investor Digi’s official reasoning for pulling out, it appears they doubt GrabGas’ integrity too. Whether or not Digi should’ve withdrawn is a matter of debate.

But its decision is entirely understandable, especially since seed investments is about selecting the right people more than the state of the business itself.