A sorry excuse of a "groundbreaking" startup with no clear objectives and an incompetent leader - Business Development Sinemia Employee Review

1.0
15 Feb 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

There are no pros to working for Kevin Hong. I praise the team in Turkey who works hard, has a chain of command and who have objectives/strategy. The LA team is disorganized with zero vision.

Cons

In full transparency, I was let go of Sinemia after working for two weeks. As you can see from the interview process, the CEO an CBD are selective about who they want to work with. (I had to write a 7 page essay, do a mock sales pitch, along with an in person and phone interview) However, it was quickly realized that the company is not equipped to handle onboarding, training, and has a sparse methodology to execute a vision. There are only 3 people who work in the office: the CEO, Kevin Hong (Chief of Business Development) and a PR representative (love her.) I was led to believe I would be working on the "Lifestyle" segment of the company, which ended up being a pseudo product development role. (Something I have no experience in.) Kevin Hong is a phony, a fraud, incompetent, and ill equipped to lead a team. He's been riding off the coattails of the people that work hard around him and isn't capable of being a leader. Kevin said I was "late" because I would set my stuff down and would go to the kitchen to grab coffee. He never replied to my slack messages, offered zero feedback about the pretend role I was attempting to do, and would blatantly avoid me in the office. He legit wasn't in the office. I have no idea what he did during the day. Kevin would take naps for several hours at a time at the Burke Williams Spa next door and claimed he "slept at the office because he works so hard." (lies.) The CEO and Kevin offered zero direction as to my objectives for the week/month/90 day plan and provided a 15 minute training. I was set up to fail. I believe in what Sinemia is trying to achieve, but this is a start up that has the wrong people "leading" the team. Steer away from any company where Kevin Hong is around. Business Development and Product Managers are completely different - make sure you know what you're signing up for before you take on the role.

Explore other reviews about Sinemia

5.0
4 Jan 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Incredibly motivated team. Very clever team. A lot of career growth and international exposure. If you are on the business development team, there are many opportunities to travel domestically and internationally if you can execute. Very strong engineering team that helps make the rest of the company look very good. A lot of growth opportunity in this space.

Cons

Not as much work/life balance as other startups but the learning and growth opportunities are tremendous. They are working on a lot of projects in FinTech and SAAS that most people aren't aware of and this has been spearheading their growth as well.

1
1.0
17 Apr 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

There are hundreds of people complaining on their twitter handle and it’s appalling to see the total lack of accountability of this company. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone.

Cons

Customer service is of paramount importance for services and this company doesn’t have any service at all. The app is broken for over 7 weeks and people are clamoring all over the internet on when this would be fixed and there no response from anyone. Customers voices go into deaf ears. This company needs an overhaul or if you can’t run it just come out of hiding and tell your customers that you can’t run the business anymore.

2
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