How we broke one of our biggest stories ever

Dear readers,

Like any story, our Team Labs piece started with a tip-off – three of them actually, coming from what appears to be three different people all reaching out on the same day. That was unusual, I thought.

To my chagrin, the timing was inconvenient – this was right before our company-wide Labor Day break.

It’s almost a tradition by now that our biggest stories tend to happen around holidays. We powered through Christmas to break the story on CoAssets, the Singapore-based investment platform that was being investigated by the police. We worked through Easter to publish our first scoop on Honestbee – the first of many stories about the grocery delivery firm to come. And right before the end of the Muslim fasting month, we had just published a story about the downfall of once-promising blockchain startup WhatsHalal.

As a lapsed believer, it sure seemed like God was punishing me for leaving the faith (I’m joking, of course).

Not that I minded too much. When we got the tip-off to the Team Labs story, journalistic instincts kicked in like always. We looked into it as much as we could on Friday, April 30 – fortunately, our tipsters did a lot of the work for us. We had also found out that some Singapore Redditors had already raised questions about the company even before we knew about the issues.

Here’s the remarkable thing about this story: There were no anonymous sources to talk to and no secret documents or public filings to comb through.

The fact that there was none was the story.

It was the first time we’ve encountered such a situation.

The following Monday, we got Team Labs founder Harsh Dalal’s side of the story in an interview that lasted over two hours. He expressed shock that we were asking him these questions and said he didn’t understand why we were asking them. He maintained that his startup was legitimate.

When things get serious

Then on Thursday, we received a cease and desist letter from a law firm representing him.

That surprised us. Shit just got real, we thought. It’s been years since we’ve received one. After all, companies we cover avoid that nuclear option because they know we operate on good faith.

So we talked to our own lawyer, and I escalated the story to our CEO and COO. Internally, we discussed the ethics of publishing this story. Team Labs wasn’t a big tech firm that can take a few hits; it’s a 20-year-old kid with a full life ahead of him.

Viral AF

Holding up a mirror