Former Hyperloop One CTO Brogan BamBrogan with the noose allegedly placed on his office chair (Image from lawsuit).
The former CTO of futuristic transportation startup Hyperloop One has filed an explosive lawsuit against the company, alleging mismanagement, nepotism and threatening behavior at the firm.
Brogan BamBrogan, who also co-founded the startup, is lead plaintiff in the suit against Hyperloop One, its co-founder and Executive Chairman Shervin Pishevar, and three other company leaders. The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Tuesday.
Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One plans to develop a new high-speed transportation system using electric propulsion, which was recently tested in the desert near Las Vegas.
However, the lawsuit for unspecified damages claims that the technological promise of the system is being strangled by the mismanagement and greed of the venture capitalists who control the company.
The suit alleges that one defendant, Afshin Pishevar, the companys then chief legal officer, and brother of Shervin Pishevar, placed a hangmans noose on BamBrogans office chair following a recent dispute over a business trip to Russia.
The suit contains a purported surveillance camera image that allegedly shows Afshin Pishevar approaching BamBrogans desk with a noose coiled in his hand.
Related Image
The purported surveillance camera image allegedly showing Afshin Pishevar approaching BamBrogans desk with a noose coiled in his left hand (image from lawsuit).
The Wall Street Journal notes that the lawsuit is a rare example of the tension that often exists between investors and technologists in Silicon Valley.
Those with the expertise to bring the hyperloop concept to fruition the team that has done an incredible job building out hardware with their heads down and hands in the dirt have been systematically marginalized, while the ‘money men’ who do not understand the technology spent little time seeking to understand its potential, focusing instead on puffery turning the company into a marketing-driven exercise, instead of the engineering-driven enterprise it should be, the suit claims.
