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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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”.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Taren contacted a few people she’s worked with in the past at Essence, but they did not want to be involved.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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)
- 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.
- The indiegogo campaign page received dozens of questions from people requesting more info. Most questions were ignored.
- 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.
- 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
13 comments:
Hmmmm, I have been reading that thread and through my own digging and research I have a much clearer picture of why the campaign failed so spectacularly. I didn't believe the "people are trying to sabotage me" story that Taren was telling everyone and felt that there was more to it than that. A week into the campaign, she broke down in tears at a meeting and then started ranting about the negative feedback the campaign had received, and she said some very offensive things about her Youtube peers and their lack of support. We encouraged her to reach out to popular Youtubers to somehow get them involved in the project and in promotion, because they were a large part of the Areya target audience. Taren said no, that they would not support her, that most of them wanted her to fail, and that she would rather achieve this on her own. Now I realize that the lack of support is due to her various personal failings, which have made their way onto the web. I can understand why people would not want to be associated with her and risk tarnishing their own reputation.
Fortunately I did not invest any of my own money into the project - only time, which I was not paid for. Personal issues aside, I think the project could have been more successful if it was properly handled and a more realistic budget was created. This could have been a very successful indie project on a small budget. Some of the things listed were excessive and unnecessary. For example, we tried to convince Taren to use the Canon EOS Rebel HD brand cameras for recording to reduce the cost of purchasing more expensive equipment. These cameras are cheap, yet they produce high quality videos. She declined and upped the cost of equipment in the budget. A friend offered to donate his empty studio apartment to be used as a "creative space" for recording videos. Taren said "no, we need something bigger". She was honestly the most difficult person I've ever had to deal with on a professional level, completely lacking in basic common sense, prone to wild, unrealistic ideas, and when combined with her poor business and work ethic, you have a recipe for disaster. Her boyfriend was with her at every meeting egging her on and encouraging her to keep upping the budget and ask for more money. It would have been a little better if she or her boyfriend had some of their own money to invest into the project, since it was their "baby", but as I mentioned before, they were evicted from her apartment and are struggling financially. She mentioned before that she had convinced some of her friends to invest in the project, but that more money was needed to make it happen. This thing has been in the works for over a year, yet it was still poorly handled. The lack of a business plan and Taren's inability to produce one raised huge red flags. After reading about the mishandled funds from the Autism fundraiser I'm wondering how the $440 raised for Areya was actually used, because we were never told what would happen to that money once the campaign was ended. We were sent a vague email informing us that the fundraiser would be cancelled and relaunched in the future. There was supposed to be a face-to-face meeting, but it never happened. There was some talk of relaunching the fundraiser on gofundme, which is another platform with lax rules similar to indiegogo.
I'm still waiting on her Autism campaign. I was happy that she started a fundraising for Autism in honor of her two Autistic kids (I've seen first hand how emotionally draining Autism can be) so it was nice seeing a black woman--a change in face--contribute to a global cause. How disappointed was I when I found out no one knows where the money went, lol. I'm still disappointed but I hope my money is helping someone with autism.
I can't fathom why someone would take advantage of autistic kids for her own gain. This is making me upset as we speak. I can't respect a person who takes advantage of vulnerable people...
I'm sure the 12k she got for autism went right in her pockets.
If not she would have shown what she did just to shut people up at least, her lack of accountability is the problem here, she refuses to answer any questions and calls the very people who support her haters for wanting know what's going on.
I wish she would just go away and raise that 4th baby with some decency.
It's very obvious that Taren and Mike were planning on pocketing the extra money from the fundraiser, which is why the budget is so inflated.
Wow....
All of this is just... wow. Keep us updated on anything else you can about the "behind the stages" workings on this "project". Taren needs to stop with all the tom foolery and grow up already.
@Taren Guy Areya TV
When she was ranting about lack of support from peers, did she mention any names specifically?
No, she didn't mention any names from what I recall. Just that she was disappointed with the "lack of support" from "popular vloggers" in the natural hair community, because none of them shared links to the Areya fundraiser with their followers on social media, etc. She stated that although she had collaborated with many of these women on hair related events, they weren't supporting her venture due to jealousy. She said that Areya was something different that no one had thought of yet, and that she wanted to move away from the small-mindedness of the typical Youtube grind, and establish herself on her own platform, on her own terms.
Thank you for doing what you can to tell the truth about what was / is really going on behind all this. I was a huge Taren supporter until all of this. I feel she has no class, or business sense. I can support a woman like her. Thank you.
Lol those smart, level headed women are not jealous of her, nobody wants to do business with a slut whose been dragged personally and professionally and won't get a job but wants her followers to support
Win a Nobel prize bitch, then maybe people will be jealous, she hasn't accomplished anything for anyone to be jealous of. She is delusional if she thinks that people who are more successful than her are jealous. Wow, lol
@Taren Guy Areya TV
Have you quit her team? Does she have anyone else left on the team willing to work for free? Is it just her by herself now?
I was a casual viewer of Taren's vlogs before Iand maybe would have even supported but after this nah. While personally i think she has done some trifling things like flaunting her relationship with a married man (Mike Mancini McConnell) - that in and of itself isnt a full reflection of her business acumen (unless you look at it from a brand mgmt & image perspective). I think its morally wrong - but we support plenty of male adulterers in business so i still MAY have given her a shot.
What has turned me off to supporting her financially is the fuzziness around her Faces of Autism campaign. There are video & emails (the internet never forgets) of her saying she got 1k, then 8k then 12k. Someone who has the audacity to take that sum, have no accountability then come back wanting 80k - girl bye. Let me see some receipts for that first 12k.
Im all here for the moral dragging even tho it takes 2 to wreck a marriage. But I cant swallow that 12k loss and still feel good about giving more.
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