Hmm, not sure

Hello everyone!

Wendell checking in here.

I would have posted this to the forums. I am not sure what has transpired, but Logan has taken the site and forums offline under the teksyndicate.com domain. They are still reachable if you know the IP however.

I’m going to be fully, bluntly honest here. I am on my way out of having an ownership stake in teksyndicate and have been for several weeks. Am I also on my way out of making content with teksyndicate? That remains to be seen, but I would say yes based on how things have gone so far.

While privacy is important, transparency also keeps us honest.

First off, an apology. Community, I’m sorry. What for you may ask? Let me provide some background first.

For me, co-founding teksyndicate, LLC with Logan and laying the ground work of our business plan has been an incredible experience. The support the fans have shown a couple of total bozos (and friend!) on the internet has been absolutely phenomenal.
For what it’s worth I was always the dweeby kid in high school that ate by themselves in the biology lab… I didn’t really figure myself out until college. So I really can’t convey the range of emotions that I feel in the here and now.

I saw the end of the last Tek episode and some other comments Logan has posted here and there about being low on money. Currently, I am a 30% owner in teksyndicate, LLC and I find this statement to be misleading for a variety of reasons.

It is also true that the company is earning record income – more income than at any other time in its history – and the gross income has grown by more than $125,000 per year for the last 3 years.

The agreement I have with Logan is that my shares in the company entitle me to 30% of the profits of the company year over year, and to date, I have been more than content to reinvest those profits back into the company to further the potential of the company. The work that I have done adds value to the company, and my shares, and the extra capital would let Logan realize his vision faster and later on I could begin earning a return for the value of my shares.

The support staff, editorial staff, and equipment costs to the company for all of my videos for 2015 that were invoiced to teksyndicate was less than $13.5k. These are only expenses to my main company that I needed to be reimbursed on, and most of that cost was a part-time student editor.

Truthfully, Logan has recently sent an email to Qain and I that he 'stepped back' for the last ever how long period of time, and he has lately has made a lot of statements that, to me, seem strange. When I have asked for accountability, transparency or an explanation internally, I haven't had good results with that. Quite frankly, I’m surprised the patrons have been as patient as they have.

Logan wants to do something new. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he wants to do, but I find myself in a difficult position feeling that I have a strong ethical obligation to the community on the one hand, but I don’t want to damage or undermine anyone’s right to work on the other.

He said to me “It’s time for us to lower your involvement so we can do most of this at our main office in Portland.”

He went on to say that if I wanted to divest my shares, I could, but it was clear he had no idea those shares were worth anything. They are worth a significant amount of money.

I have proposed to Logan that he take epic pants store and the large /razethew0rld channel with 600,000+ subscribers, but that he give up ownership and control of the smaller 100,000 subscriber /teksyndicate hardware channel the teksyndicate.com domain name, twitter, etc. to allow the teksyndicate community to exist independently.

In that scenario I would continue to support it and produce my own content.

I find a lot of the statements lately around money to be disingenuous and misleading. I can’t abide by them ethically because I know the full situation. Believe me when I tell you the fans have showered lavish support on the company not just through patreon but the store and other means also. Some missteps I have chalked up to inexperience running a business, but calls for accountability and reasonableness have been met with ignored emails, Logan cutting my access to the partnership’s corporate bank account and a lack of financial transparency with regard to the use of the company credit card.

For me, the way that Logan runs the business has been deeply frustrating because of that lack of accountability, disorganization and apparent inability to learn from past mistakes. He needs a business coach and I’m fine with it if that business coach isn’t me.

Just like Patreon, many sponsors are also unhappy with us for a lot of the same reasons: missed deadlines, broken promises, etc. I have worked very diligently to use the resources I have to meet promises and obligations for both sponsored and unsponsored projects.

If Logan has been working on the business or this new vision the last year, he hasn’t really looped in Qain, Jennifer or myself on what exactly that might be.

He has been busy with side projects like the game and other things which have used company money but he does not believe the rest of us should be entitled to profits from. On the contrary, when asked about these things, we got some nonsensical lines about Logan having “stepped back too soon” and none of us knows what that means.

For my shares and exit of the company, I don’t believe Logan understood that the value, minimally, was the profits that I had reinvested into the company. On that valuation criteria alone, they are worth over $100k.

So I remain in a holding pattern waiting on Logan to tell me what he intends to do for my ownership exit as he staffs up replacements for us on the Tek. After talking with Qain, I have no doubt that these folks have been fed some twisted version of the facts as that is what happened from my perspective with the relationship between Qain and myself.

For my own part of this, I am sorry it has come to this. I'm sure that I myself don't have the full picture. When logan says "all will be clear in 5 days" I have no idea what that might mean.

I tried very hard to put the company first and give it the best shot for success that it could possibly have. I don’t see this as a zero sum game with regard to the fans, personalities, viewers, etc. but with Logan’s irrational actions, apparent hostile attitude and unaccountability to anyone here I really don’t see another option for a way forward.

Whether I create a new name for the community or continue operations under the old name, I am not going anywhere. I am thankful for the many friends and awesome people I have met along the way and I support you all in whatever you might decide to do. I do not yet know what my role will be in the future.

Logan, for his part, is a brilliant entertainer and I have never met anyone more gifted with handling people and the oratory arts. He has many good ideas, and he has my full support in any future endeavors that he may undertake and I have no doubt we have not seen the last of his creativity and his ability to spin entertaining yarns. I truly hope that he can find satisfaction and happiness in his work and in time he will become an entrepreneur if he keeps at it.

Wendell

ps. Apologies for grammar, spelling, etc. This was composed for brevity and I feel like it still needs a TLDR.