Co-Founders Split Amicably, Each Telling Identical Story With Other Guy as Villain
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Word-for-word the same account, down to the betrayal in the parking garage.
By Crash Windward
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Following the dissolution of their three-year startup, co-founders Ravi Mehta and Tom Beck have each begun recounting a strikingly amicable parting of ways, delivering accounts that are word-for-word identical except for which of the two men is the calculating villain who ruined everything.
“It was super mutual, no hard feelings,” said Mehta, who then spent 25 uninterrupted minutes describing how Beck had “changed,” “stopped caring about the mission,” and “did the thing in the parking garage,” an incident Mehta declined to specify but referred to as “unforgivable.”
Reached separately, Beck offered an account that matched Mehta’s in every structural detail — the drifting apart, the loss of trust, the fateful confrontation in the parking garage — while casting himself as the betrayed party and Mehta as “the most political person I’ve ever met.”
“We’re still really close,” Beck added, before requesting that the reporter not tell Mehta anything he had just said.
Mutual acquaintances confirmed that the two narratives are so symmetrical that they could be performed as a single monologue, with the names swapped at random, and no listener would be able to identify which founder was speaking.
“They both used the phrase ‘I wish him nothing but the best,’” said one former employee. “They both said it through their teeth. They both immediately asked who I’d talked to.”
Both men have reportedly begun building new companies in the exact same space, each describing the other’s venture as “a bit of a copy, honestly,” and each having already reached out to the same three investors to get ahead of the narrative.
At press time, Mehta and Beck had separately posted near-identical LinkedIn announcements thanking “an incredible co-founder” for “an unforgettable journey,” each tagging the other and turning off replies.