Suroosh Alvi is the co-founder of Vice Media, discussing the dot-com bubble era when investor Richard Szalwinski acquired controlling interest in Vice.
Disclosure
Founders faked a Village Voice lawsuit to justify rebranding as Vice
“We told the world that we were being sued by the Village Voice, and that's why we had to change the name to Vice.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Founders bluffed about an investor's interest to secure a meeting with him
“We said in, in that interview in La Presse that he was interested in buying us, and he then read it, and then had his office contact us a few days later and said he wants to meet you guys.”
Opinion
Alt-weeklies failed to properly cover underground counterculture
“The depraved underground culture that, that I was obsessed with was not being covered properly in the alt-weeklies.”
Disclosure
Early Vice advertisers were given total freedom over their purchased pages
“Our view towards advertising, if you buy that page of advertising, you own that page, you can do whatever you want with it.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shane Smith settled Vice's apparel debts for ten cents on the dollar
“We owed all this money to these Italian, like, fashion companies who were manufacturing our clothes, and Shane went and took meetings with all of them, and figured out how to reduce the debt. So he's like, well, I know you want 200,000. I've got 20. Take it or…”
Assertion Supported
Vice accidentally exposed fugitive John McAfee's location via unscrubbed photo metadata
“There's the one, the McAfee story, I don't know if you remember that one the guy who did the He was the guy who did the antivirus software, he was, like, on the run from the police a couple years ago? Exactly, where we kind of embedded with him, and released a…”