Ron probably makes Dave feel lucky that he chose him when he could have chosen people with more experience…just as he reminds employees that they’re lucky he chose them. The reality is that anyone Ron chooses for anything is unlucky. He will want to pester you day and night, ask you to swear that you are loyal and fully committed, monitor your every move, and expect you to work night and day.

He certainly uses Dave in this fashion and he will continue to use other people in this manner. Dave, I know you will read this. Wake up. You can do better. When all the evidence is on one side, you cannot continue to believe in Ron’s version of the truth.

Ron – Initially you will find this guy pursuasive (even charismatic); in time, you’ll come to know his deceiving and manipulative self.

Dave – Moronic but innocent. Dude is too deep in the water to admit having partnered up with the wrong guy. Ron plays this guy like a Stradivarius.

Ron fudged documents and told lies. However not sure if Dave ever had a part in this. So I left. Too bad.

For those of you reading this to whom Mr. Gutman has spoken, proclaiming his innocence, I suspect he has told you that he’s “sick about it” and quoted “spirals of negativity” and other dribble. He’ll pretend that he has personal insight by proclaiming that he made bad hiring decisions. You’ll listen to him and empathize. His friend Dave will do the same and talk about how personally hurt they are. Once they have done all of that, please know that you’re being played. All of the employees they have upset are upset because of personal actions: they lied and manipulated talented, trusting, and knowledgable people.

Incompetence is forgivable. This is not about poor business acumen or a lack of understanding about tech start ups. This is about pathologic behavior that has negative and lasting effects on the lives of well-intentioned people.

Employees and people who have inside knowledge who have posted here are doing so to warn others. Prior to now, if you would search Ron/Yaron Gutman your search would derive little to nothing (even though he has started 4/6/8 companies — which number you hear depends on which version of the truth he is on). Now when he drops the credible names of luminaries like Mark Leslie, Eric Benhammoud, Woodrow Myers, etc. you won’t be walking in the dark like we were.

Enough said, and consider yourself warned.

If you really followed your own advice, you would not be the subject of so many personal attacks. Think about it. You’re all about saying the right thing but your actions prove that you do not help others or care about others. You treat your employees like children who have to be watched over every minute. You don’t trust them.

Your own needs are so important that you’re not above calling someone on Christmas or during a funeral. You don’t respect boundaries. You don’t respect laws.

When 30 people leave a company during a 12 month time frame, the explanation must go beyond bad hiring decisions.

Directing our and others’ energy toward doing good (rather than
channeling it in negative, destructive or unpleasant ways) is
something that the Wellsphere team is highly committed to. We
encourage anyone who feels frustrated, sad, disenchanted, confused,
gloomy or depressed to try this: help someone else be healthier and
happier. Though it sounds counterintuitive to help others just at the
time when you want to focus on yourself, when you help others, it
actually makes YOU feel better. Plus, all the warm, positive regard
your receive from the people you help (like all the wonderful e-mails
we’ve been getting from community members, thanking us and encouraging
us to continue doing what we’re doing), will help to convert any bad
energy you may have accumulated to good energy that will make YOU a
happier individual.

These founders are deserving of personal attacks. You wouldn’t _believe_ the shit they pulled on people. Lying about them being fired. Forging documents to Administaff about firing/resignation. Putting the wrong dates on forms (always in their favor… I know of at least 3 instances of this). Changing contracts on file (I have first-hand knowledge of at least 2 instances of this). They are completely unscrupulous. Check the date on your forms. Trust me.

As for taking this up with them directly, believe me, I tried. I tried for many months. I tried until I was blue in the face. Ron and Dave are in complete denial. Ask them about the input they solicited from the employees. It covered this with them honestly and directly. They chose to ignore it. They have their heads in the sand. Ron Gutman is a sociopath. Don’t believe it? Read this and tell me if it isn’t him 100%. ( http://www.exit...rtcls/socio.htm ). We can’t figure Dave out. Seems like he was once his own man, but his free will has been subsumed by Ron.

We tried. It was hopeless. Their MO is to get new faces in the door and try the same old shit again, make another 2 months of progess, every one quits, then they try again. Ron will tell you people are too negative. The fact is he drives people insane.

It was definitely to early to release that product. It was ridiculous from the beginning. Do you even know what they were doing 3 months ago? Something completely different. Not even a consumer based app. They chase whatever idea fancies them today.

Ron’s first startup? Come on. Surely he’s regaled you with tales of how he’s started 7 or 8 companies, all but one successfully. Where are they? What are their names? Where are the hordes of good people who helped him and still want to work with and for him? He’s a liar. He has no clue how to manage people. If he did, they wouldn’t have had 30 people (REALLY, ITS TRUE) in and out of the door in calendar year 2006. He’s just batty.

I’ve worked for countless startups. Wellsphere is the most bumbling brew of incompetence and disaster I’ve ever seen. They are rookies among rookies. Their only saving grace is that they do somehow manage to attract fabulous employees, which pulls them along for some time. But they inevitably leave when they realize how moronic the people steering the ship are. I know at least 8 of these people. We still talk. We will probably be friends and colleagues for years to come. We spend most of our time laughing about our experiences at Hellsphere.

There was a core group of engineers. Really good ones. Stanford. MIT, etc. They got fed up and quit. Found work the next day. Why waste your time? There were no features to polish. Ron couldn’t keep the ship pointed in the same direction for more than four weeks at a time. How can you be successful in that environment?

Unrealistic expectations? Hello! Hi there! I’m Ron. This is my friend Dave. We want you to build this in four weeks. You agreed to this deadline. It has to be done by then because that’s when we have to launch. Bugger if it’s not possible. We can do it if we believe. Have some of this magical fairy dust!

The requirements weren’t flushed out because they never point at the same goal long enough to develop a sense of what they are building.

They’ve had several good UI people. They quit too. Some in tears at how awful Ron and Dave are. They were truly heartless. Who makes their employees cry? Seriously now? Who? More people throw shoes!

I commend the team that stuck it out. I met them once. They seemed like solid guys. If only we could have warned them what they were getting into. We tried. There was no way they could know. We are just disgruntled employees. Maybe now through this shared experience we can come to understand one another.

Jon, I’ve heard you’re good at what you do. We’re going to look you up. Sorry you got dragged across the country for this, but don’t worry. There are tons of brilliant, smart people to work with in this town… you just got drafted by the wrong team.

Having said that, what the hell is with this site? Who the hell funded another social networking site? Again, someone please explain to me how this is a major improvement on Craig’s List for Activity Partners aggregating feeds from an online directory and an existing/thriving social networking site? Hey, you know what, maybe someone should put that page together right now….

I quit Wellsphere today after working there for a month. It was the hardest I’ve worked in my entire life and I am totally crushed that the site was released so early. In my opinion, it was too early to release and we pushed the product out the door.

Sure, this is Ron and Dave’s first web startup, but that doesn’t mean they’re completely incompetent. They made some mistakes. It happens. Startups are hard work, as most of us acknowledge, and part the reason many of us love being in startups is the learning experience involved.

Wellsphere’s plan is to get user feedback on the site from users and improve. They have a long way to go, but they are definitely motivated to do it.

In my opinion, I saw these things from the inside:

1) There was not a core group of in-house engineers working full-time on the product from beginning to end. There was a lot of turn over, which made it hard to keep consistent progress and polish the features.

2) There was a very unrealistic expectation about when the site would be ready. Rather than determining how long engineering would need to produce the product, it seemed that a date was picked and we went forward with it, regardless of the state of progress.

3) Part of the reason a bad deadline was picked, was because the requirements were not flushed out for engineering to determine how long it would take. So, during development, core concepts about about the site’s functionality changed several times.

4) A UI person was not hired to help ensure the site was usable.

The team of people that worked on this site gave it all they had. We came a long way in a very short time. It just wasn’t enough time, and the requirements were not defined.

It seems that there are a lot of disgruntled ex-employees commenting here. Now that I am an ex-employee, I can say that Ron and Dave were good to me. Yes, they expected a lot from me, and yes, there were times when I felt like I was being pushed too far, but they were good to me. I’m not sure what happened with the other employees, but I know how I was treated and I know it was good.

Finally, I want to make it clear that I chose to make this post, and no one else asked me to do it. I just felt compelled to share my view since there was so much negativity here.

I’m just reiterating what I heard from a friend in the company. I have no way of confirming anything on Ron’s personal life, but I think it’s obvious to everyone that his professional life is bit of a joke considering Wellsphere is one of the most horribly designed sites I have ever seen.

terrible site, yes. ron gutman no clue, yes. dave kashen ron’s little bitch, yes. utter incompetence, yes.

obviously i’m no fan of ron and think he’s a total ass but to say he ‘apparently’ smokes and drinks like a fish isn’t cool. i worked there and agree with your conculsions except for the drinking and smoking. i can’t say that i’m 100% certain but i am 99% sure you’re off the mark on that assertion. everything else, dead on!

People -please don’t be fooled by utter incompetence. By the way -Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft are all working on consumer health care solutions and it’s obvious that these people know what they are doing unlike Ron Gutman and Dave Kashen.

Why is this different from Yahoo Groups? I can’t see any functionality that is peculiar to health, apart from a bunch of drop-downs with lists of activities, which I could come up with by looking at Yahoo Directory or wikipedia.

I tried to create a goal and had to battle the UI to do it. I stopped bothering and now I am not going to go back, because it pissed me off. In a crowded space like health, it’s absolute lunacy to go out with anything even slightly defective.

Nearly everything can be explained away with the “early alpha” defense, and the idea that if you throw a party, “they” will come. I don’t see how this site helps catalyze that chain reaction. They need to have focused on a niche within fitness that requires this, and then expanded to all the various activities and wellness topics. This is a classic case of early over-extension on ideas that is probably hurting all their other resources and preventing them from creating a quality product.