Update

I was curious about how the Areya money raised from the fundraiser would be used, so I contacted the person who was in charge of managing the indiegogo page. According to this person, of the 20 funders, only 14 were legit. Items marked with a green check mark were legit donations.

Taren donated about $120 of her own money to the campaign in the form of "Anonymous" donations, to make the campaign appear more active. Once indiegogo takes their cut (about 9%), the payout is less than $300, which altogether is a colossal failure.

Why you should not donate your money to Areya TV and Taren Guy

Dear Taren Guy followers, please be advised that the Areya TV project is too risky to give your money to. As someone who saw firsthand the shifty dealings of the poorly organized project, I urge you to be careful. There are plans to relaunch the fundraiser on a new platform in a few months with a new team and I feel that people should be warned. A few things to note:

1. Taren and her boyfriend/co-founder Mike have 0 capital of their own to contribute to the campaign. They were evicted from Taren’s Brooklyn apartment and forced to move to a cheaper neighborhood in NJ. Before moving to NJ, they were staying with a friend of Taren’s in Brooklyn. Their unstable home situation is one of many reasons why the Areya fundraiser never picked up steam and was improperly handled from the get go.
2. They are struggling financially and can’t even afford basic things like hosting for the website. A website hosting company called Rackspace quoted them almost $500/monthly for hosting Areya. Areya was intended to be an online streaming network which would be resource intensive. 
3. There is no website for Areya because the web design companies they contacted refused to start the project without a deposit, which they were unable to provide
4. Taren previously tried submitting the campaign to Kickstarter but it was rejected because the objectives and funding/budget breakdown were unclear. Indiegogo was much more lenient.
5. The original funding goal was $106200. Members of the team advised Taren to scale this down because we felt it was asking for too much. We advised her to start smaller, but she wanted to go big right away. 
6. There was a lot of in-fighting between Taren, Mike, and the other team members where they referred to anyone who raised objections throughout the campaign or tried to give advice as “negative” and “small minded”.
7. The people who wanted to be involved with things like production and video editing refused to work unless funding was achieved, because no one wanted to contribute their own money to a risky project or to work for free.
8. Taren and Mike tried to pitch the idea for Areya to a few cable networks, including BET. All networks contacted rejected the idea because they felt it might not be popular and was too big a financial risk. 
9. The videos that were recorded (Raye6, Big Hair Girls, and the Areya promo reel) were made using donated studio time. No one on the production crew was paid for their work. The Big Hair Girls were each paid $200 for their appearance. Raye6 was not paid and chose to appear for free in order to gain attention for her own work.
10. No business plan was ever created. After people began requesting more info on how the money would be used, Taren started working on a business plan using a template downloaded from online, but it was never completed due to her pregnancy, living situation, and ill health.
11. Taren contacted a few people she’s worked with in the past at Essence, but they did not want to be involved.
12. Taren and one social media “expert” she hired control and post on the Areya instagram page, on Facebook and Youtube. There are no other “team” members as of right now. There was a small team of 6, but everyone pulled away when the fundraiser fell through.
13. Taren was surprised and disappointed when the Indiegogo campaign failed to gain traction. She expected to raise at least $30,000 in the first two weeks and bragged about her “loyal” fanbase. She stated that she felt betrayed and rejected by her peers on Youtube, because no one publicly showed their support or helped to promote her campaign. 
14. Taren claimed that there were stalkers and trolls on various forums who were trying to sabotage the campaign. She even claimed that people online were “racist” and said “if my skin was darker and my hair kinkier all those black girls on youtube would be rushing to my side to support me”. She said that people were jealous of her success and the fact that she was trying to do something different from the typical Youtube grind (which is why she insisted that Areya would not be a youtube channel)
15. When people started asking for more details about the campaign budget, Taren began deleting comments. She instructed her social media person to delete all negative comments and any comments regarding her private life.
16. The indiegogo campaign page received dozens of questions from people requesting more info. Most questions were ignored. 
17. The decision to pull the campaign was made very early, after the backlash Taren received and limited donations. There was no info given on how the funds raised so far will be used. There are plans to relaunch the campaign later this year on a different platform.
18. I do not believe that anyone should donate their money to this campaign or the new campaign after seeing how poorly it was handled. 

Screen cap from the pdf of the original Areya TV budget:

Vague email announcing the fundraiser would be canceled:

@ Lindt not sure if my comment is visible but here's your answer