Ugh. I remember when you could take down a mugger with the Red Herring; and then you could at least pass it off as a Watchtower pamphlet. Then a place to find sort of interesting companies that TC couldn't be bothered with yet... I hope the reporters get paid (or will someone find a connection to Sam Sethi...?)

Red Herring.. Yeah, I remember that one! I read it last at the same time as I invested $50k in a danish hi-tech venture capital firm.. Believe those $50k are worth less than $100 now..

So is Red Herring..

That's really sad. On another note, it is surprising that some fools didn't throw some cash their way. Fools will fund the stupidest things.

Wonder if the sheriff's office gave them warning this time.

@Megan McCarthy: nah, that's valleywag's job.

I remember a long time ago, back when RH was running out of funding the... well. whatever-numbered time. When I had told Joel that I was planning to quit after only a few months at the magazine, he went nuts: I'd never learn how to be an editor unless I stuck with RH. RH was going to weather these times and come back stronger than ever, et cetera.

$20 says Alex forces the "staff" to work out of his house from now on.

Insiders say it's all being taken care of. Red Herring (ie, Vieux) has more lives than a cat. Pity.

@masterofmonkeys: For the past year and a half, Valleywag has been to Red Herring as Cassandra was to Troy. Glad to see someone else finally paying attention. Though I wonder if crashtestpilot isn't too far off with the Vieux home office scenario.

@Acererak: Alex will only ask the young females to work from his house.

This clown cannot even speak proper Engrish!

Vieux is a complete lunatic, from what I hear. Apparently, if you do anything that's even mildly annoying to him, which seems very easy to do, he calls you a racist -- loudly.

@johnnypotatoes: racist!

i know people who exhibeted and spoke at RH conference last week. Reports are that they are suing V who ripped them off because no one showed up. He promised to return there dough, yeah sure

Vieux is being funny... he shed around 20 sales people the past year....because they were not productive... LOL

maybe it helps to pay your eployees on time or have your expenses paid... etc. those people all left because of very poor work circumstances and a dicatator of a CEO named VIEUX. Don't let Vieux tell you otherwise.

We met with Alex Vieux at his Mountain View offices in 2004, he told us enthusiastically about how he bought the firm and fired all the staff but one. His business model was to fire the old, expensive staff and replaced them with inexpensive, inexperienced people, and planned to leverage his existing lucrative conference business by using the Red Herring name. They had the most crowded, least private office I've seen outside Tokyo. He was either unaware or unconcerned about how rude and arrogant he was, and when we left we were glad there was no business opportunity there.

Anyone who worked at Red Herring will tell you that Alex Vieux is, at best, a compulsive liar with serious delusions of grandeur, or at worst, a complete and certifiable lunatic.

He has lied so many times, for so long, that he probably believes much of it himself. He treats his employees like indentured servants (indeed, many of his "interns" were exactly that, for all intents and purposes). He refused to listen to one word of common sense from anyone -- his way or the highway -- and he deserves every bit of humiliation that he has coming.

I just feel bad for the employees who were still there, and the investors that AV BS'ed into sinking their cash into his money pit.

I'm an exRHer as well, and this is certainly no surprise. I feel very badly for the folks that still worked at the company, as everyone at that company minus Vieux were incredibly talented and hard working. But when you have an insane egomaniac in charge of a company, either the company makes billions or it crashes, and crashes hard. This case was so obviously the latter for a long time... as we all know. But Vieux will go on. He'll write the articles himself if he has to, likely. He has too much pride to let his ship sink, even though it's already sitting at the bottom of the ocean.

@valleygal33: It will sink through the bottom of the ocean, to where the magma is. That's his secret plan! mwha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA.

Either that or you just typed the stupidist metaphor that has ever appeared on Valleywag. Just sayin'.