[quote=“aptalca, post:109, topic:192320”]OK, I looked through Vera and Mios company profiles to figure out their employment situation and noticed something very disturbing.
On linkedin, they seem to pad their employment numbers for Vera by creating fake accounts. Ouch. That’s pitiful. Here’s their company page that shows 32 employees on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mi-casa-verde
They list themselves as having 50-200 employees, and apparently 32 employees on linkedin. When you click to see their employees, you get pages of empty, fake accounts with 0 connections listed. No names, details or connections.
I know that Vera is just a subsidiary of MiOS and all the employees are actually working for MiOS, but come on.
If you look at MiOS employment, you can see that their entire development team is in Romania (with a couple people in Colombia and France). San Francisco office seems to have a handful of people mostly in business (executives and office folk like accounting, etc.) The company headquarters is listed as Hong Kong but I am guessing they just have a local agent there, and not a real office.
MiOS’s business plan is to beta test the hub and the software through Vera, and license the stable version to commercial businesses. Looking at the MiOS website, it doesn’t seem like their plan worked well so far. The biggest licensees listed include among others Vera/MiCasaVerde (duh) and a company called TrickTV, whose Director of Product Marketing is listed as Colin Burke McClure, who now happens to be an employee of MiOS (Product Development Director).
It looks like this company had a lot of potential back in 2008-2011 when they were leading the charge in automation. However, fast forward to 2016, they ran out of steam, they are no longer the hot startup, their commercial business does not seem to have led to anything substantial (a few commercial clients, maybe some ongoing consulting fees) and on the consumer side, they are falling way behind the new competitors like Smartthings, Wink, etc. who are now the hot startups.
The hardware is underwhelming, they are using old router equipment still (MIPS architecture), when there are much better arm based alternatives that are faster and cheaper. Their software is based on OpenWRT (router software, really), which made sense in 2008 when it was the best they had and it worked with their router based equipment.
At some point in the last few years, they should have made the switch to a different hardware and software platform, but instead they stuck with this platform where the years of band-aiding is no longer working.
I’m using a Veralite with UI5. With my existing equipment, everything works (I’m not touching it at all). I’ll keep this setup until I add a new equipment that is not compatible with Veralite or UI5, and then I’ll switch to a different platform.
Oh and by the way, a couple people joked that Marc is the only employee at Vera. That seems to technically be true. All others are with MiOS, but Marc is with Vera. And Marc is not a developer, he is the Sr. Manager of Community Relations, so it’s his job to connect with the community on the forums. He also seems to have his own sales/marketing consulting firm called MCS Performance Group (I think it’s safe to assume MCS are his initials) and he was hired by Vera back in 2012 as a consultant. Not sure if he is now full time with Vera or on as a contractor. Here’s his linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcshenker[/quote]
So what you’re saying is that MiOS and Vera are in fact front companies for the Romanian Mafia, and the global shipments of Vera’s are stuffed with unmarked US bills and drugs in the worlds largest Automation related money laundering/drug smuggling operation.
If this is my last post on the forum, then I’m on to something and they’ve found me… :-X
