Warp has been in the spotlight following controversial posts from accounts associated with the company.
On Thursday, an account going by the name Vittorio wrote to X, “I like white guys better. They do more and are better suited to the roles I need to play to get Kardashev up the ranks. Let the black guys run and play basketball.”
His profile included a badge indicating that he was affiliated with Warp, a startup that provides payroll software focused on automating state-by-state tax compliance, and that he was part of incubator Y Combinator’s winter 2023 cohort. The badge was created by X (formerly Twitter) as part of its 2022 X for Business program. It’s usually given to employees, but it appears Warp is rolling it out more broadly as part of an unconventional marketing strategy.
So the blame was focused not just on Vittorio but also on Warp. The startup denied his post as “false,” adding, “We believe excellence can come from anywhere.” The company insisted Vittorio “was not a Warp employee” and said it had removed his affiliate badge.
Vittorio’s posts and account have since been deleted. “We don’t like what he said. We’ve removed his badge. Everyone is swearing at him and us online, and that’s okay. No one should feel sorry for him. But some of you are trying to get his address, call people he knows, SWAT him, and end his life. Congratulations,” Warp’s head of growth Varunram Ganesh wrote.
Warp also said it would “broadly narrow its affiliate badges and limit them to a small number of people we know personally.” The company did not immediately respond to a TechCrunch email requesting more details about its relationships with Vittorio and other affiliates.
Meanwhile, some of these affiliate accounts are defending Vittorio’s post. The Pico Paco account said, “Vittorio did nothing wrong” and that this was just a “PR crisis.” (Pico Paco appears to have lost its affiliate badge yesterday.) Another affiliate account asked, “Could he be wrong?”
Earlier this week, before the current controversy, The Pragmatic Engineer writer Gergely Orosz complained that his entire X feed was filled with accounts with blue checkmarks affiliated with Warp — posts that felt like “engagement bait,” not just self-consciously edgy political opinions but also copycat posts designed to spread like a virus.
Orosz speculated that Warp was pursuing a new kind of marketing strategy: “Most companies are giving their employees these affiliate badges that they use on their ‘hip’ accounts to bring attention to Warp and 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 being open to feedback.”
When another poster suggested that Warp was comfortable with racism, Sharma responded, “No, I'm mainly talking about all the people who say, 'Why are you giving people Warp badges?' We're okay with trying and experimenting with these things, and like I said, we always welcome feedback.”
