Payroll startup Warp disavows ‘affiliate’ who posted about white superiority

Warp is under the spotlight following controversial posts from an account tied to the company.

On Thursday, an account posting under the name Vittorio wrote on X, “i like White people more, they do more, they are better for the roles i need to climb the kardashev scale i’ll let blacks run and play basketball.”

His profile included a badge indicating he was affiliated with Warp, which offers payroll software with a focus on automating state-by-state tax compliance and was part of the winter 2023 cohort at incubator Y Combinator. The badge is something that X (formerly Twitter) created as part of the X for Business program in 2022 — something that’s usually given to employees, but which Warp appears to have distributed more broadly as part of an unconventional marketing strategy.

So the ensuing outcry focused not just on Vittorio, but on Warp as well. The startup disavowed his post as “wrong,” adding, “We believe excellence can come from anywhere.” The company claimed Vittorio was “never a Warp employee” and said it had removed his affiliate badge.

Vittorio’s post and account have since been deleted. Warp’s Head of Growth Varunram Ganesh wrote, “I don’t like what he said, we removed his badge. Everyone piles on him / us online, which is also fine. Nobody should feel bad for him But some of you guys found his address, called people he knows, trying to SWAT him, and are trying to end his whole life Congrats?”

Warp also said it was “cutting down on affiliate badges more broadly, keeping it to a smaller group of people that we personally know.” The company did not immediately respond to a TechCrunch email asking for more details about its relationship with Vittorio and other affiliates.

Meanwhile, some of these affiliate accounts have been defending Vittorio’s post. The account Pico Paco said “vittorio did nothing wrong” and that this was just a “pr crisis.” (Pico Paco appeared to lose its affiliate badge yesterday.) Another affiliate account asked, “is he wrong tho”.

Earlier this week, before the current controversy, The Pragmatic Engineer writer Gergely Orosz complained that his entire X feed had become full of blue checkmarked X accounts affiliated with Warp and “posting what feels like ‘engagement bait’” — not just self-consciously edgy political opinions but also copycat posts seemingly designed to go viral.

Orosz speculated that Warp was pursuing a new kind of marketing strategy: “Give this affiliate badge (that most companies would use for eg employees) to ‘hip’ accounts who then draw attention to Warp and also promote it.”

In a now-deleted post, Warp CEO Ayush Sharma wrote that “freedom of speech is essential,” and that Warp is “comfortable with taking risks while also being open to feedback.”

Asked if that means Warp is comfortable with racism, Sharma replied, “no, talking mainly about all the folks who are like ‘why do you give out warp badge to ppl’ – we are okay with trying/experimenting with all this, and as I said, always open to feedback.”