Heed to previous employees, don't work for this or any of the companies owned by the management. - Anonymous employee Vyykn Employee Review

The Vyykn mission is ambitious, far reaching, challenging, noble and extremely exciting. Disrupting the multibillion dollar bottled water paradigm and aiming to solve our broken municipal water infrastructure by creating an alternate multi-layered hydration ecosystem is not for the faint of heart. The mission, the company, and the founder have frequently challenged me in ways outside of my comfort zone and beyond what I thought I was capable of. Aside from the reward of working for a company that can truly make a global difference, discovering my potential and being encouraged to do so is the thing I am most grateful for. The company, and by the company, I really mean the founder is not afraid to entrust any employee that takes the initiative to try his or her hand at anything that allows them to grow within the company and as an individual. Like most startups, you wear multiple hats and Vyykn embraces trying on as many hats as you can handle.

I don’t know who the previous review came from and I don’t want to do a line by line dissection of what he/she wrote or what their motivation for doing so was. However, I do want to refute what was written and offer my perspective as a current employee of a year and a half. I was drawn to Vyykn and its mission from the moment I heard it was moving its headquarters to Ketchum. I flew to CA to introduce myself to the founder who was working at a TED event in Berkeley that Vyykn was sponsoring. I showed up and I said, can I help? He said yes and I worked the rest of the weekend learning and then promoting Vyykn’s mission. When I returned to Ketchum, I called the founder who was based in Boise at the time and said “I want to work for Vyykn, can I come down and learn more about the company”. He said “sure”. I drove to Boise the next day and he spent three hours with me going the Vyykn business model. I was blown away with what he had been developing for three years and I asked him if I could have a job. He challenged me on my word selection – ‘job’ but offered me the opportunity to prove myself. I asked him what would I be doing. He said, “I don’t know, that’s up to you”. I was confused, slightly annoyed with the lack of specificity but thoroughly intrigued and motivated to do whatever it was going to take to secure a position with the company. I worked for free for the first two months as the company wasn’t hiring at the time but at the end of the two months the founder offered me a job, I have been paid ever since and I haven’t looked back. How I came to work for Vyykn is somewhat unconventional. Everything I have experienced working for Vyykn since then, by comparison to what I have been used to, has been somewhat unconventional. The founder in many ways is unconventional. To some people, myself included, unconventional can be sometimes be uncomfortable. What Vyykn, and in particular the founder, have taught me in the last year is that in the middle of unconventional and uncomfortable is where the good stuff is. Long hours, sometimes seemingly unsurmountable challenges, sometimes failings, are part and parcel of the journey and are a critical part of anything meaningful. Vyykn is as ‘big picture’ as it gets and it requires a leader and in this case a founder, to stay true to the vision with a relentless and sometimes ruthless adherence to a course that serves the mission. To misconstrue actions, intentions and an ideology as the previous reviewer has done in my opinion, is to not appreciate the scale of what he and Vyykn are attempting to undertake and what will be required to get there.

The opportunity can seem incredibly exciting and potentially very lucrative for an 'early in' at what the founder calls a 'start-up'. If the founder had any character or integrity, he could actually make this somewhat successful and impactful.

The Founder/CEO is a disaster and the company lies at every turn to employees, partners, clients, board members, and potential investors. The company doesn't pay employees and will claim that 'we're weeks from investment so work on an accrued salary and it will be paid back at that time". It's been a company line for 5+ years. The vast majority of former employees have never been paid and deleted from company balance sheets the day they left. The systems Vyykn builds don't work (the hardware or software) and ALL clients eventually regret ever installing them. The founder and the systems convey lies about their technology and safety. The founder will say ad naseum 'this company is for the greater good' when most realize in short order the entire pursuit is to inflate his massive ego and a fantasy created in his own head of the accomplishments he's attained. The culture is one of 'screw anyone and everyone over if it might get us another half step down the road' and employees become increasingly miserable as the reality of the company comes into focus. The culture is also reflected in a boss who verbally assaults employees in front of others and behind their back.