Humanity Protocol's CEO, Terence Kwok, Faces Criticism Over Past Business Failures
CryptoNewsTerminal Staff16 May, 2024
Humanity Protocol's CEO, Terence Kwok, Faces Criticism Over Past Business Failures
Humanity Protocol's CEO, Terence Kwok, has come under fire for his history of failing to manage IT companies, leading to bankruptcy. A recent report in the U.K.-based Financial Times (FT) revealed that Kwok previously founded and mismanaged a Hong Kong-based hotel IT startup called Thinklabs. Thinklabs, once a unicorn startup valued at up to $1.5 billion, reportedly burned through nearly $170 million in funding and was near bankruptcy due to mismanagement. An anonymous former Thinklabs employee told the FT, "Thinklabs was forced to shut down after its investor SoftBank 'accused the company of diverting money from its Japanese joint venture to keep the rest of the business afloat.'" Kwok struggled to pay salaries to staff and contractors and eventually laid off the vast majority of employees on Aug. 1. Thinklabs' European arm entered liquidation in January 2020. Kwok's past failures raise concerns about his ability to lead Humanity Protocol, which recently announced that it had raised about $30 million in seed funding and claimed to have reached a valuation of $1 billion.
