The corporate behind a cellphone app for figuring out a meals’s dietary worth has amassed $32 million in debt and nonetheless owes again pay to 2 dozen ex-employees because it shuts down.
Opsis Well being, of Highlands Ranch, filed for Chapter 7 chapter March 15, lower than one 12 months after it launched Plateful, the corporate’s signature cellphone app. Chapter 7 requires an organization to liquidate its property and distribute them amongst these it owes cash to.
Plateful permits customers to scan 1 million meals, then assigns these meals each a dietary worth and an “eco worth” for figuring out their environmental influence, in keeping with Opsis.
“We had been unable to safe further funding,” Opsis CEO Kevin Grundy stated in a textual content message Monday. “I can’t touch upon anything whereas the chapter proceedings proceed.”
Kevin Johnson, a Boulder man who was Opsis’ vice chairman of machine studying, wrote in a November lawsuit that Opsis thought Plateful “would revolutionize eating regimen planning and vitamin monitoring.” However days earlier than it launched the app final April, Opsis’ chief working officer “introduced through a pre-recorded video that Opsis can be unable to well timed pay salaries.”
Throughout an all-hands assembly the subsequent day, April 13, “Opsis management induced Opsis staff to proceed working with false guarantees that the corporate would safe funding immediately and pay staff,” in keeping with Johnson’s lawsuit, which seeks $42,500 in again pay.
Edward Wiley, the previous chief expertise officer at Opsis, wrote in a separate November lawsuit that Opsis “regularly skilled money circulate challenges, which it tried to handle via third-party financing and loans from staff,” together with Wiley.
“Because of Opsis’ cash-flow points it, on a number of events, selected to withhold earned compensation from its staff,” in keeping with Wiley, who’s owed $54,000.
Johnson’s case is scheduled for trial in July. Wiley’s is scheduled for trial in September.
Opsis additionally owes $17.9 million to the founding father of CardWorks, a subprime lender in New York, and $2.3 million to the CEO of Barry’s Tickets, an internet reseller, in keeping with chapter filings.
Twenty-five different individuals, firms and trusts are owed a complete of $6.2 million that they loaned to Opsis, primarily within the type of easy agreements for future fairness, or SAFEs, an funding technique standard with tech startups that doesn’t require promoting a stake within the firm.
Twenty-four former Opsis staff are owed $372,000 in again pay, the corporate’s chapter paperwork says. Opsis additionally owes three regulation companies a complete of $100,000.
In whole, Opsis has $31.8 million in debt and $1.2 million in property. Its property are patents and laptop code for the Plateful app, in keeping with Opsis’ chapter paperwork.
Its chapter lawyer is Jonathan Dickey with Kutner Brinen Dickey Riley in Denver.
This story was reported by our companion BusinessDen.