A VC’s Amazon Review, and a Quirky Approach to Disclosure; Is it ethical for a venture capital investor to praise a product put out by a company he’s invested in without disclosing his financial interest?

July 10, 2014 Leave a comment

Jul 9, 2014

A VC’s Amazon Review, and a Quirky Approach to Disclosure

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TOM GARA

Is it ethical for a venture capital investor to praise a product put out by a company he’s invested in without disclosing his financial interest?

James D. Robinson IV, a founder of RRE Ventures in New York City,  which is currently investing from a $280 million fund raised this year, did just that. RRE  is an investor in Quirky Inc., Palantir Technologies Inc. and OnDeck Capital Inc.

In a review on Amazon.com AMZN +1.90%, Robinson praised Aros, an air conditioner introduced in May by Quirky Inc. and General Electric GE -0.19%, rating it a high five out of five stars.

“Beautiful, functional, smart,” he wrote. “As for cooling, seems to do a great job, and unlike some, it just doesn’t seem any louder to me.”  The loudness remark was a response to some critics who had cited the “noise” in their own Amazon reviews.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/09/an-amazon-review-and-a-quirky-approach-to-disclosure/

Filed under Life

About bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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