Pros
The mission and vision, written by people no longer at the company, are inspiring.
Cons
Except once you dig into those big inspiring ideas it becomes crystal clear that the founder/CEO has no idea what he’s talking about. Just ask one of his 3 previous co-founders who have all erased this sham of a business from their resumes and social media profiles. I met Lawrence in the fall of 2017 and was inspired to help him build the high school cybersecurity program. Given my experience in education and ed tech I had a lot to share, including a network of designers, developers, business experts, and K-12 school leaders. I was happy to do this part time, for free, I was that inspired. Money is really what this founder is after. In order to participate in one of the many accelerator programs Spark has engaged in (and taken investment dollars from), I was lured into quitting a stable job with the promise of a salary and benefits. I asked repeatedly if the company could afford this and was assured that my salary would be paid for by Spark's "consulting" business, which generated a large amount of monthly recurring revenue. Whenever I asked about this separate consulting side of the house I was often deflected by the CEO. Eventually I learned that the neither the consulting, nor its revenue, existed and that the accelerator's investment was paying my salary/benefits and not for the program development (developers, artists, hosting, hardware) as it was intended. SURPRISE! After 3 months of grueling work across all areas of this project (I developed the product, collected pilot agreements, wrote a full pitch script the ceo couldn’t even bother to try and learn...this guy didn’t even know our business model) I found out I was going to be unpaid by not being paid, there was absolutely NO WARNING. I found out I was LOSING MY HEALTHCARE COVERAGE from a letter from our benefits provider.
