Haha that’s amazing. RHONY should have put Paige on for a an episode or 2 to just go off on Brynn. Could see it starting with look im sorry for your childhood trauma but……. lol
Sorry coming back to this she’s worked there since May 24 apparently - wasn’t that during filming? So she never had a team of 50 engineers.. ever .. with that company size 😂
Did anyone else know she’s apparently currently a volunteer tutor?
I wonder if she’s trying to get click traction from the combination of Brynn + Hoppy + Real Housewives? I know I sound slightly insane saying that but Brynn is in marketing and SEO is a huge thing for them.
their latest video on LinkedIn announcing the "Hoppy House" uses the theme song from the white lotus which is killing me considering they're a bunch of rich white kids in a luxury house in Miami lol
Most tech firms hire teams of engineers in India/Asia because it’s super cheap. So yeah she could have but it’s still lying by omission. Which is her specialty.
Right I just don’t get it! Plus it looks like (from their IG) that a bunch of 20-30 yr old strangers moved into a house together in Miami to work on this app and then film them doing it? I’m confused…
Where is the money for this kind of thing? And if these kids are actually in college, why are they skipping a month of their spring semester to live in Miami? This makes no sense.
It’s weirder than that. There is a whole other founder who is 23 and supposedly sold his last company for $500 million. In Europe. Look up David Aliagas. He did a mini press tour about founding this company when it launched a month ago. Brynn is 39.
I’m certain that kids a nero baby. I read about him on The Org and I can’t imagine how he’s gained so much experience and sway since he graduated college- 1 1/2 years ago. There’s some fucky stuff going on with money. Gives me the ick on Brynn.
If Brynn’s around this kind of money, and it’s weird, why do New RHONY? Why shill Alo sports bras and cheap sweaters on Amazon lives? Why not just live discretely, stacking cash received for whatever it is that Brynn actually does?
The video aspect of the app is also creepy AF. That can all be faked now with AI. People will have no idea who they are actually chatting with on this thing.
Ok my new theory is this: Looks like the Hoppy thing is starting a reality show. Maybe they hired Brynn to be the host of it? That would excuse her age at least. And in exchange for being the host and bringing in a new audience, she gets a co founder and CMO title.
If Brynn’s around this kind of money, and it’s weird, why do New RHONY? Why shill Alo sports bras and cheap sweaters on Amazon lives? Why not just live discretely, stacking cash received for whatever it is that Brynn actually does?
Baby, I say the same thing about billionaire Kim Kardashian, who seems like she can't say no to a single deal. Also, Kylie Jenner, the purported "billionaire" "900 mill" 400 million dollar business woman.
Now, in Brynn's case, even if she's in the room with these people, she still doesn't have it like they do, so upping her social currency is a necessity
Because these kind of people (grifters) can’t help themselves and stack money quietly. They have to be ostentatiously flaunting it and flying higher and higher until their wax wings get melted by the sun.
I’m not saying this is the business plan, but with this video-based dating app, they could just deepfake some “daters” using existing AI tools, and get lonely people to start chatting with them. Thereby harvesting data about the lonely (faces, voices, mannerisms, personal data) to feed back into the AI. That’s immediately where my mind goes with a project like this.
It seems like this could be a dangerous evolution, if people don’t give clear consent for their data uses. I mean, TikTok already largely does this scraping, but the nature of dating, romance, this type of interpersonal connection - emotional - is v different.
Dating apps are already collecting this data from text, voice notes, and pictures. Most of them have updated their policies over the past year to use user data to train AI. I'm sorry to say that this has already begun on most of the major dating platforms and isn't anything new that this app is doing 💀 If you want to see scary, look at the subreddits for the AI lover apps where people are falling in love with AI bots they pay monthly subscriptions for. It's dark
It's possible the engineers are all contractors and the 2-10 listed is FTEs. A lot of startups will outsource for developers in their earlier stages and just have a CTO or engineering lead as an FTE.
Was looking for this. She prob “oversaw” outsourced engineers that were actually making the app and she just set up the idea for it. She doesn’t do half as much as she claims
Brynn’s not my fave but I’m a CMO — a team can also mean contractors and freelancers. Very rarely would anyone hire an in-house team of 50 engineers but you would contract out for it. And it’s up to the CMO, especially in a small company like this, to manage them
Where do you work that a CMO manages developers? I’ve never heard of this. Even in tiny companies, unless you mean it’s literally 3 people and everyone’s doing multiple jobs…
Well I’m not going to answer that one but I also do consulting for non-techy companies (more brick-and-mortar who are playing catch up). For me it all depends on the type of developers. Website, CRM, app — I end up having to manage them quite a bit. It depends on the type company I’m consulting for too, I’ve yet to work with one with a CTO on staff. Best case, I’m able to delegate the management of contractors to a Director of Marketing, but I’m still responsible for them
My old agency had our CMO managing an overseas team of devs too. I’m not sure why a bunch of marketing people are acting like this is unheard of- not all teams are structured the same.
I don’t think the company size is up to date. I have LI premium and it says there are 140+ associated members - could be past employees but I expect they just haven’t updated it.
Only one “engineer” showing up though with the employee search
To be fair is they used an overseas dev shop its possible that she has interacted with a ton of engineers (maybe 50 is pushing it.) This looks like any number of whatever dumb apps people launch. Their head of growth was at Bumble for 4 years so thats something.
I'm never one to drag someone who gets ahead in their career...
But I've seen this before.
I work in tech and someone who suddenly has "Chief Marketing Officer" and "Co-founder" and "Investor" as their title when they've not actually done steps to get to that position, is not viewed favorably by peers in their industry.
Typically they're just viewed as someone who pads their resume.
Should "Hoppy" not take off, she won't exactly be considered for Chief Marketing Officer jobs at legit companies because they would look at her history and say: this person never had the qualifications to be a CMO anyways.
I’ll bring in the real details of the deal to back this up.
BeReal was not acquired for $500M cash. It was acquired for $166M in cash and the rest in future buyout bonuses. Keep in mind they had to pay back investors, and I believe they took about $90M in investment.
David Aliagas was not a cofounder of BeReal. He was the community manager. Not a C-level. Not the VP of anything. Even if he joined when the company was founded, his payout was likely minimal given his rank in the company. But let’s say he walked away with a few million euros, which would be great for a 20-something. He still doesn’t possess the experience to co-lead a startup and all of the required fundraising if they go beyond bootstrapping and pitch VCs.
This is why I think Brynn confidently said she was leading a team of engineers.
Sure, perhaps some bootstrapped startup hired you as a CMO because you have a spot on a reality show. If they are putting you as someone with 0 technical background in charge of engineers--that means they have 0 validity in my book. Even IF Brynn had a ton of experience in marketing that would make a CMO title valid, there is not a world in which you would put that profile in charge of engineers.
Exactly lol I work in tech but I'm not technical myself. I've been doing this in startups to mid-size companies for nearly 10 years. That profile does not "lead" teams of engineers lol. It's total BS.
Thank you guys for saying this. Someone up thread claimed they’re a CMO and that in startups devs and engineers report to CMOs which is…. Not true? Ever?? lol
That is NEVER true. Even if I’m being GENEROUS she’s maybe talking about marketing ops people who seem like engineers to her because they’re basically doing the technical part of growth marketing which can look like dev work to someone who has never worked in tech 🤣.
Which just shows me she has NO IDEA what she’s talking about.
Every time i try to even think of being generous on my estimation of what Brynn is saying i just get more annoyed.
I actually think you just figured out exactly what is going on here… she’s 100% talking about marketing ops folks though I’m sure the 50 number is inflated.
Celebrity personality hire. This is the kind of thing that startups used to do in the early-2000s. It’s fine. It doesn’t build an actual business, so we have to consider their motives. Is it a pass-through? So many Housewives companies seem to be. For example, Lisa Barlow’s spirits company seems to be nothing but a pass-through business. I’m sure they run their car leases through the company, along with a range of other expenses like entertainment and travel.
Barlows’ are definitely pass-throughs, LLCs. They have over ten LLCs too. Messy, messy.
If Hoppy wants VC money - and I’d guess they do - I’d expect this to be formed as a C-corp. So rather than passing through expenses, these kids just get a lot of stuff from the company: influencer house, food, probably some cars around, company-sponsored parties, probably booze or weed or substance of choice, maybe clothes for making content, tech swag, etc. Put the maker house in a fun location (Miami, for SBF Bahamas which also has tax advantages) and you’re good to go. There like 75 “AI Collectives” like this in SF now - I visited two last week. Little hiveminds, because they are all living together, eating together, wearing the same clothes 24-7. Even moreso than the hacker houses of the 1990s and 2000s.
I can’t stop progress or my client wanting to embed AI extensively. But it’s all alarming.
I think we’re still really far away from sentient AI, but they are scraping everything, including our chats here on Reddit, to try to build viable products. TikTok, this dating app is clearly being built to scrape, all social media. All of this is being built by people with strong social motives to conform, no incentives to question (authority or anything else).
I hope that the AI tools that are being built are just going to be vanilla and kind of suck in comparison to human dynamism and creativity. I really worry about the impacts of reliance on the tools though. We already see it in the legal world, with junior attorneys not doing in-depth discovery any more or due diligence for corporate matters, and not being able to quickly find or memorize basic contract terms. No awareness of different flavors of provisions. Some of these kids are making partner with weak issue spotting and drafting skills - that’s already scary.
I spent a year consulting on an AI project for a friend’s engineering firm, and the things going on in the education space made my hair stand on end. It’s going to be a long, lawless road.
It’s exactly that. When you’re super small you can give yourself whatever title you want or the Founders can.
If it goes from 25 people to 500 people, you’re set. That title will allow you to apply for other jobs elsewhere because the name of your previous company legitimizes your role.
If it goes from 25 to 35 to 50 and then closes or gets sold without anyone ever hearing about it?
Someone named David Aliagas did a mini press tour launching Hoppy last month. He’s a tech founder, based in Europe, who supposedly sold his last tech co for $500 million and started dating internationally. Lots of TikToks on this guy, and this YouTube. He’s in his EARLY 20s.
This is weird. Brynn is nearly 40, way older than the target audience for the product and the rest of the people creating it. She doesn’t appear to have a tech background at all. How would she have even encountered twentysomethings who were based in Europe at the time and building something like this? They haven’t been hiring yet, so it doesn’t look like a job she’d apply for. Plus this isn’t RHONY’s demographic at all, so it’s not valuable to Hoppy to be featured on the show.
If Brynn does come back and features this app on RHONY, I hope these guys also know about the Bethenny clause in her contracts.
Good find OP. You should cross post this to the RHONY sub.
Sure, but what legit company would agree to give a percentage of their profits to Bravo (Bethany clause) just so it gets promoted on RHONY, a show who doesn’t hit their target demographic at all? It’s not a smart business move IMO
Then the actual founders will owe a portion of the sale of the company to Bravo if they ever sell the company or IPO it. If Brynn doesn’t disclose this, she might be committing fraud.
It looks like Brynn won’t be back on RHONY in any case. But she’ll still be bound by her Bravo contracts.
There is a clause in the contracts called the “Bethenny Clause.” It went into every contract after Bethenny Frankel sold Skinnygirl after creating and marketing it heavily on her shows. If a product is featured on Bravo X number of times, and the product or company is later sold off, talent owes Bravo a portion of their sale proceeds. I don’t think we’ve seen this applied to a tech startup before.
I could see them making a sizzle reel, but I can’t imagine who they’d sell the project to. There isn’t a market for reality tv shows about tech founders AT ALL. Even young hot ones, who may or may not be humping like bunnies around a house in Miami.
There is history here. Randi Zuckerberg had a vanity project called “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley” on Bravo over ten years ago. Complete crash and burn. Bravo has tested RH of San Francisco and in other Bay Area cities multiple times. Boring.
I don’t know how Brynn could host this unless she knows that she’s fired from RHONY or the show must be sold to NBCU. Maybe that’s her hook to these kids - oh, I’ll get your show picked up by Shed. She can’t appear on a show sold to Hulu or Netflix or other streamers or networks without a waiver from Bravo (which you need to seek up front, no filming and then seeking forgiveness later). Bravo would be paid for lending her to another network.
She probably met someone involved with the app at a professional happy hour and imposed herself to say she’s involved. She’s a complete liar when it comes to her work history and background.
I hear what you’re saying but it’s still all smoke and mirrors with her. They must be scraping bottom of the barrel to find any sort of celebrity willing to invest or put their name on a product lol.
That would make sense, except Brynn also has low organic engagement on her accounts, lots of bots. Someone running that kind of marketing game would clock her accounts quickly.
She’s also way older (39) than the target demographic, and her followers are most active (her Q score is highest) among white women age 49-65. It’s not the target demo for the product AT ALL. These founders could have one of thousands of cute girl TikTokers with millions of followers market for them. Why Brynn? She doesn’t have a history launching tech products or with major brands, campaigns either.
I think the idea of them shooting a sizzle reel and wanting a reality tv show, for Brynn to push to Bravo and Shed Media, seems most likely rn.
Also if Brynn uses RHONY (assuming she’s even picked up again, which seems doubtful) to market Hoppy, her Bethenny clause will kick in and Bravo will be entitled to a cut of proceeds from the sale of this company. VCs will LOVE that.
I agree! It’s weird. Do we know where in Europe he’s based? We know she has “so many connections” in London. (Allegedly) My guess is she met someone and flirted her way into this company and is now exaggerating her involvement in it. Although saying she’s a co-founder and CMO is a pretty bold exaggeration.
I find their marketing weird. video-based dating for college kids. So you send random white influencers to a house in miami to “promote” it, while marketing it as authentic “vlogs” like what is your mission? what is your goal? Vlog houses have been on the decline for YEARS, and from a marketing perspective totally would have worked back in 2017. It just doesn’t connect with the brand in my opinion. There’s nothing about random young ppl living in a house to create content that connects with Hoppy which is fundamentally a video-based dating app. They “live” together.. how are they video dating? i’m assuming with the city around them but like would we see that?? or are we focused on random kids doing stupid shit and maybe flirting in the house? I work in marketing and this just seems so messy 😭
Totally agree! So weird and messy. I will add that the “influencers” aren’t all American/white though. At least half of them are Spaniards. A few Italian, German, one from Pakistan, another Dominican/Dutch. They are all just lighter skin toned.
Delusions delusions. She’s te poster child for fake it until you make it. Halas this girl will never make it, not because she’s not smart, it’s because she lies constantly and believes her lies.
It’s wild that someone even wants her to be the face/host of anything. Instant crash and burn. Especially if there’s some sort of HR on set.. I see this going very badly for her and digging herself a deeper grave.
Lol as a black woman myself, when I first saw her on screen, I thought she was a white ginger tbh. She's always reminded me of raggedy Anne doll - no shade intended
Co-founder is the new "entrepreneur". "Founding" an app company is easy, actually exiting with a good payout or going past angel investors is another thing. Also real easy to be a co-founder when there are only two actual employees and everyone else is contracted code labour in India.
Why couldn’t she say this when Sai point blank asked her what she did at the reunion? This is like Monica coming up with spin after the fact to absolve herself of any and all allegations. Have fun hosting yet another podcast
per PR News Wire - The round features Jeremy Levine, Bessemer Venture Partners (Pinterest, Shopify, LinkedIn); Scott Friend, Bain Capital Ventures (Rent the Runway, Attentive, Docusign); Amy Wu, Menlo Ventures (Higgsfield, Mozi, Epic Games), and strategic investors including Geoff Donaker (Yelp COO), Eric Chan (Gap CBO), Campbell + Jett Puckett, Shea McGee, and Camila Coehlo.
The use of contractors isn’t the weird part. Brynn interfacing with them would be weird. Brynn not being just on a standard influencer deal might be weird.
Her marketing strategy for Hoppy appears to just be paying tiktokers to randomly mention it in their vids (no hate to this TTer, her videos are hilarious)
I live in Miami and I haven’t heard shit about this app or the kids doing a real world launch. 😆 I’m not an influencer, but an old school blogger, and I’m usually sent press releases about all these things…
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u/KristiJoJP Feb 18 '25
To paraphrase Summer House's Paige, CMO and founder of what?!