Calum Brannan - Social Media's Cowboy Builder?

This blog has been created to document the business antics of Mr Calum Brannan, a self-proclaimed young technology entrepreneur and Social Media guru.

The contents herein are published (and should be read) on the strict understanding that they are believed to be true, fair and accurate.

However, there is no means of independently corroborating the various sources of information used to create this content and, therefore, any aspects or comments that are proven (on the balance of probability) to be inaccurate will be removed or amended appropriately and are unreservedly apologised for in advance.

It should also be noted that, whilst third party comments will be vetted for illegal, abusive or defamatory content, all parties named herein have the unfettered right of reply and their comments will be published unedited if their identity can be validated.

In reading this blog you expressly accept the caveats detailed above and agree to consider the information contained herein with an open mind.

This blog documents the activities of Calum Brannan and his business associates.

Friday, 4 December 2009

Calum Brannan's apparently unethical approach to business

More than one person has described Calum Brannan as, to paraphrase, "lacking in integrity" and some of the descriptions I've been given were far less flattering.  "He'd sell his Grandmother for the bus fare home, even if it wasn't raining" was another I was given - I'm simply repeating what I was told!


In this context, it's not hard to see why he (apparently) finds it so easy to flit from one funder and company to another.  PPLparty became Youmeo and not, as Calum suggested on his About page something he "successfully exited in 2007" - this is simply not true, he transformed PPLparty into Youmeo and took a large amount of investment.



Then according to Calum's About page

From the pioneering early days of consumer social networking, Calum founded Inormas in 2009; a business focused on providing social tools and communities for charities, corporate firms and global brands.
In fact, Calum was not the "founder" of Inormas, and according to Companies House, he wasn't even formally made a Director.


This is correct, but only after he'd put his old businesses, including Youmeo, into receivership - you'll notice that Youmeo STILL has pride of place on his website, despite the fact that it is in the hands of the receivers!  Not only that, but he was actually still operating it until very recently, hosted on the servers of his most recent employer without their knowledge or consent!


There's more!


He also had a few other companies hosted on that server without their knowledge - appointment toolkit was one example, but there were others!


Calum and James also used the funding from the Inormas investor to stoke their pipeline for Social Helium, including claiming expenses for trips to see potential clients...... only to take this pipeline with them, when they left Inormas.


The question is this: "If you build a pipeline of business on company time, claiming salary for your work and expenses for the trips and purporting to represent a company, when you have absolutely NO intention of allowing them to benefit from that business - which Section of the Fraud Act covers thisFalse representation?  Fraud by abuse of position?  Or is it just plain Theft?



There's more!


It would appear that, as far back as late Summer, Calum and James had hatched a plot to create a pipeline of business, funded by Inormas, that they had absolutely no intention of allowing Inormas' investors to benefit from.  In other words, it appears that for up to 3 months before they actually left Inormas, they were already planning to take the business that Inormas had funded and paid for in order to set up their new company, Social Helium!  Bear in mind that everything they've done so far has FAILED!


We can reveal the names of these clients, but won't be doing so at the moment.


However, there's MORE!


It would appear that one of their larger and longer-term clients wasn't just aware of this, they were actually complicit in it happening.  We have seen emails between Calum Brannan and a senior member of this client which agrees the basis upon which it will happen!!


And there's MORE yet, but that's for another day......



But, referring back to the points made at the start of this post, it's possible to see why some people might be motivated to make disparaging comments about Calum's integrity and trustworthiness, if the information above is even partly true.

 

No comments:

Post a Comment