Rap Genius Incites Unsolicited Startup Beef Over Sexiest Tech Bros
There are certain risks any reporter exposes herself to by agreeing to interview the cofounders of Rap Genius. Once you've crossed the wobbly line of crushed up Vyvanse into their Williamsburg offices, there's no going back. There they are on your gChat, up in your Snapchat, sending invitations to events that possibly only occur in the trippy Playa of their minds.
Logorrheic late night emails appear out of the blue, offering up some—any!—bizarre reason to cover their exploits, please please please post about our feud with x, y, or z. At some point in the hallowed halls of Yale or Y Combinator, the future millionaires must have overheard the cliche about there being no such thing as bad press and took it as gospel.
Even after the brain surgery that was supposed to cure him of this bad habit, for example, cofounder Mahbod Moghadam emailed me and Melissa Stanger, Business Insider's associate editor of lists & rankings—a woman I've never met—last night to try to goad us into covering some kind of lame, possibly imaginary sporting challenge between Rap Genius cofounder Ilan Zechory and Zach Sims, the cofounder and CEO of Codecademy—all over their "Sexiest Start-up Man" ranking on some website no one has ever heard of.
On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Mahbod Moghadam <mahbod@rapgenius.com> wrote:
NITASHA: As you know, Zach was voted "Sexiest Start-up Man" in a recent publication http://www.cantonrep.com/article/201311… (he #12)
We at Rap Genius say: FUCK THAAT! Ilan is 10x sexier (French menswear brand Melinda Gloss and Italian shoewear brand Santoni supply him for free!) Baby girl take a fuckin Pepsi challenge see for yourself: https://www.facebook.com/zechory
I wish I had access to their Tinders but YOU GOT THAT SHIT I DONT In any case, we are declaring an all-out beef w/Codecademy for the throne...
MELISSA: ("Mel") you are trippin soooooo hard! Come to Williamsburg look up close - have you seen Ilan's muscular-ass thighs? Do you know that his skin is flawless? He has 8-pack? Why you think homeboy Zach going w tha B&W?? The devil is in the details young lady!!!
In any case this weekend we are going to have them play some heads-up poker, a set of tennis, a drinking contest - a winner gwan emerge (Ilan) and you girls gonna see wassup. If you wanna cover these "World's Sexiest Startup Man" events you are welcome - we will get you soused up you gonna feel nice.
Let me cut to the chase: Ilan's sexy is $15M Zach's is $10M YOU FEEL ME? You know what I'm saying now? You feel me.....
No, genius. I really, really don't.
UPDATE: Moghadam sent the following correction via gChat. Make it stop?
yooo nitasha!!! great article but one correction - the ranking of Zach as Sexiest Man was from BUSINESS INSIDER not a "no name website":http://www.businessinsider.com/the-sexiest-ce…
sorry I goofed w/tha link I sent you I thought you already knew! swag SWAG ps you better be coming to the poetry reading and fashion genius launch so that you can witness these sexy mangs' Feats of Strength <3