Hey. JNandez will address all of this but just want to add my 2 cents. I run operations at JNandez Poker. Been working with JNandez for a longer time than any of these guys.
Can confirm the following:
- Initial negotiations had some people at 10% shares of JNP and some at 5%. Filip was a 10%. I was too. Gay_on_tse aka Johnny167 was a 10%. Seacombe and two other team members started at 5%.
- Compensation method was changed multiple times over the course of 3 months, starting with 10% shares, then changes to gross revenue share, then net revenue share (a mistake) and rectified later as 8% gross revenue share. All payments were made at the 8% gross revenue shared agreed by everyone and paid in full.
- We all went into JNP under the impression that we would be shareholders. That changed into gross revenue when the Swiss banks were being a bit too stringent with the business bank account registration. We opted to leave it all to JN and form contracts with the team.
- Contracts were delayed by everyone doing their tax consulting and the business bank account, and frankly it wasn't a huge priority at the time as I can remember. People were paid out in full anyway without a contract for the last agreed upon deal.
- Johnny put up $60k CAD for software development. As far as I know Johnny found a deal with JNandez for this though by the end, I am not sure if there is a grievance here. Johnny?
- "The 8% gross revenue share is very different from the initially promised 10% shares." Yes. We also never negotiated the terms of the partnership. Johnny, Filip and Seacombe were of the idea that they would own 10% of the company for life, even after leaving at any point. All the other team members for sure did not want a deal like that, we wanted people to keep working to earn what they made.
- When Filip says there would be 'too much paperwork', the truth is that there would indeed be a bunch of paperwork as we would have to negotiate dozens of terms or shares, exits at different timeframes, etc. We would have to have multiple negotiations between us about it, and we decided it would be best to focus on building the company and providing value. Coupled with the bank account stuff, we decided for a 10% gross revenue share and all agreed. I remember this conversation so I'm slightly surprised there was no concrete reasonning. Back then as I remember it, it wasn't a huge big deal for most of us and were mostly eager to get going. A bigger deal was when I proposed we all switch to net (including myself). That caused a bigger issue. We anyway switched back to gross revenue at 8% and 4% for lower ones as stated before any payouts were done. One team member (Luuk) received a raise during this time as his performance was great.
- Clarification. You say when we left JNandez Poker. When you leave, your don't say "Are we getting fired?" I will let JN tell the details of how he fired you guys.
- Fernando had little involvement in the content creation for the Mastermind. This is kinda lol. No content went through except through Fernando. He directed Horse into how and what to do. The same for the other content creation team. He often sent stuff back, required changes and even scrapped complete presentations/topics. This was in fact part of the frustration from some of the team members, like Seacombe who was not performing to our standards. Luuk also had some trouble keeping up with the presentation part and we moved him to a higher involvement of community support and quiz making.
- The process laid out by Filip is somewhat accurate except he is glossing over imo Fernando's review/participation process. It's not like they didn't have hundreds of hours worth of meetings to discuss courses, topics, how to present stuff, etc. Members get strategy from Fernando and it is solver-based. Filip for sure was the lead researcher. Seacombe was not performing up to standards in research. When Johnny joined, the 'longtime' 200z reg, he was pretty aware of the process. I think Filip is talking about two different phases. The first weeks Fernando was hands on the content a lot more, then when Filip was ready to take a bigger responsability he did it and Fernando felt comfortable with him bringing the presentations as he saw fit (still reviewed them). The reviewing/onboarding process lasted a longer time with Luuk and Seacombe as their strengths did not lie in presentation making.
- We did push people to the max. We were also working to the max. It seems like Filip thinks he worked the most in the company and we were just chilling. We all work 15 hours a day and even through weekends. I have no issue with it and frankly enjoy this **** out of it. Fernando is still on another level in my opinion. Of course he will occassionaly take afternoons or even full days off at points, and sometimes without warning. He has also made almost a high quality PLO video a day since April 1st, taking our library to 120+ videos as fast as one could reasonably expect. And then he also attended development meetings, marketing meeting, and even had a life. Filip also attended some of these meetings as we were bringing him into more business decisions. Sometimes he asked to be more involved, sometimes less (towards the end we did not speak on a daily basis iirc).
- We were all overwhelmed by the memberships and offering chat support, and even though there were leadership/management failures, we appreciated the work everyone put in. We also traveled to Vegas twice with Filip (travel paid afaik).
- Filip and these two guys were incredibly active in the Discord chat. We asked they be more active in the forums as we value the permanence and structure of it more, and have opportunities to leverage its tech. Definitely though, Filip was a super hard worker from April to June. On every month nearing the 1st day of the month, we also try to push even harder as many members subscribe/renew around those days. Anything we could do to be extra helpful was done.
- Fernando can be unreliable to getting things done and has sometimes poor communication for sure, especially when taking a breather. As I see it he often comes back reenergized and works like a machine. It's not ideal but he gets **** done or makes up for it most of the time. Don't think its fair only Filip cared or took responsibility, if Fernando was slacking I also communicated with him and we all frankly just pushed each other. Filip also told me to get **** done multiple times and sometimes I was tired and did **** anyway.
- Fernando changes his mind about a lot of things and constantly pivots. This is true. Again, I would not change that as it is slighly better than being slow to adjust and stale. Definitely not ideal again and can 'waste energy'. Still...would not change that completely.
- Seacombe in particular was a victim about changes because we were still, 3 months in, looking for his best position in the team. We found adjustments for everyone's roles but when someone wasn't performing up to standards we had no shame in experimenting with changes. Might seem random from the outside but we had long conversations about all of these things and it was not random. We also experiment with the membership, like with an accountability program, study groups and stuff that was sometimes short-lived or we realized we could do something better. We will keep doing this. The current team has no complaining about it afaik.
- Fernando (and me) handled the scarf thing pretty badly. No excuse. Should have acted and paid out in full for that. Horse, the rest of the team had already been paid out in full and we were putting that behind us. After how he was fired with Seacombe and Johnny, we really didn't want to hear from these guys. Again, a mistake when money is owed. Obviously it was never about money at all, it was very emotional - although this is not an excuse. His mom was hired upon the first weeks of the business to create 50ish scarves for the PLO Mastermind initial yearly members as a gift. Also we hired Horse's cousin to run ads for us (and paid him out in full after Horse was fired). Everyone was paid in full except for the scarves thing which came at a later date (June 22nd according to Filip). They were fired before June started, and honestly it was the last thing on JNandez' mind. His first communication after the whole ordeal was about the scarves and it was pretty tilting, although again, an escrow should have been set up immediately to make the transfer. I don't fault JN for not sending the money at this point without receiving the scarves, but the resolution was not too difficult to set up surely, although there was a team breakup and somewhat of a community breakup as well.
- Presently, JNandez does all the content (that is not from a guest coach), from conceptualization to finished product and even uploads it and updates the PLO Mastermind Discord group. Luuk is killing it with interactive quizzes and forum posting, and I handle operations and support personally.
- Fernando did tell Filip about the 8% gross revenue before the other team members. Iirc he hadnt spoken to Johnny about it, although it could be that Seacombe was also not aware of the raise during these days. I trust Filip told them pretty much from when he was aware, maybe JN did as well. They were upset at this point because they knew they would not receive lifetime value from the company with the last 8% gross revenue deal.
- Filip says Fernando's word cannot be trusted. I trust him and he has not reneged on any payment to anyone that I know of, outside the scarves issue with Filip (after paying him in full for his work and his cousin, and dealing an agreement with Johnny as well). In fact I am pretty sure Filip and Seacombe were paid in advance or had money sent to them before some months were over and accounted for completely. I think Seacombe moved out of his parents house and Horse bought a laptop or a washing machine for his mom, or both. Not sure.
- I don't believe the rest of the team feels they were falsely lead to believe that they would reap lifetime benefits of future expansion. We had already a growing conflict with Johnny about his future involvement with the company and Filip was made aware of it. Johnny was supposed to work on the software development and due to another software project he had a bigger stake in, we did not think it was a good idea to have him also be in charge of that development with us. He is also not that easy to manage or get routine updates from, although I'm sure we are also not skilled enough in these areas. We eventually is when we switched him to the content team, that is what Horse refers to the '200z reg that joined' the content team. That way he would work closely with Horse, have a more experienced player in the content team (than Seacombe) and it would appease Horse to work closely with his friend.
- To be clear, there has been no real expansion into any other game types and won't be for a substantial time. This issue is so premature, but anyway we did make at least clear to Filip, before the others, that a) if and when we expanded, we might need to take in more people (we had already grossly underestimated the workload the Mastermind was for all the team), b) that therefore those new people would be paid for their work and not everything can be covered by JNandez (he is putting all the funds into the company, except the aforementioned 60k CAD, and c) that while we would try to find responsabilities and duties for our team members, we would not limit ourselves to only internal hiring/repositioning. It would be pretty hard to imagine any of these guys working on NLHE or any other game tbh. Filip himself though, was told that he would surely have a higher participation in future projects than the other team members, as would I handling the operations.
- I insist this grievance is somewhat premature but these guys really wanted to have that life set for working for the company for a few months before receiving their share of the revenue that came in. We saw it more as we were building something together and would keep doing so, and would expand when appropriate and however appropriately with our staff. There could have been much better communication on this (as well as many other issues) and mistakes were clearly made on various fronts. Hopefully we have learned good lessons and do better with our future partners. I think I can confidently say the current team members are rocking it and we'll be more careful with promises made for sure.
- Filip, Seacombe and Johnny grouped and demanded a flat monthly payout of $25,000 for the three of them (I imagine split 10k, 10k and 5k). JNandez declined on the spot, they asked for a counteroffer and Fernando fired them. I'm sure the feeling of betrayal was mutual. Fernando and me have a lot to learn about leadership, communication and running a business. Some of these lack of skills are shared by the Upswing Poker guys. JNandez, however, paid out fully and promptly what wasn't paid in advance. Unfortunately the scarf matter will not be resolved as it's not about money to any party at this point.
It's weird writing all of this on a public forum but anyway here we are. Sorry Filip and Johnny. To be honest it was great working with you up to a point, and we started building something great. I lost a lot of respect for you and I'm sure you did to me also. Anyway, have a good life and I'm glad you're going back to school Filip, wish things ended better even though I will never respect what you guys are doing now, like on your streams.
