The Case Against Crowdfunding in the Work Chat
Meta employees lost big on real estate investments touted by a colleague.
Among the many channels on Meta Platforms Inc.’s internal messaging system is a group for employees to chat about investing in real estate. In 2019 an engineering recruiter named Sief Khafagi, who worked in Meta’s Los Angeles office, began posting about Scoutpads, a service he’d set up that connected users with developers to put money into real estate.
Scoutpads wasn’t directly investing in properties. Instead, it was an online platform that served as a middleman between investors and real estate partners who pooled the money to buy properties, usually in residential areas. The startup then took a referral fee from its users’ returns when they were sold. The idea appealed to Meta employees, who had plenty of money to spend, along with a natural affinity for a crowdfunding website reducing the friction of real-life investments. Its appearance in an office chatroom gave it an added air of legitimacy. Dozens of Khafagi’s co-workers invested.