mahbod

By the time that Rap Genius graced the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in May 2013, the three had landed funding from Andreessen Horowitz and were on the verge of rebranding Rap Genius as Genius and expanding its remit. But Moghadam also began attracting attention to the annotation company for belligerent behavior, both public and private. Indeed, in 2014, after posting tasteless comments as annotations after a mass murderer’s manifesto was posted to Genius’s platform, Moghadam resigned at the urging of Lehman, who was the company’s CEO. Looking back, Moghadam expressed dismay that Genius contributors weren’t paid for helping to build out the platform. Slamming the new owners of Genius, Moghadam had added that at “at least the [original] CEO [Lehman] straight up built Genius with his own two hands.