The Vinyl Media Pressing plant at 4201 N. Brighton Blvd. is seen on Thursday, May 2, 2024. (Justin Wingerter/BusinessDen)
An executive who was fired from the Denver subscription service Vinyl Me, Please this year is suing his former employer for $290,000 and claiming he “saved the company from impending bankruptcy” at a time when VMP was losing $1 million per year in investor capital.
Rich Kylberg, of Denver, was let go in March and sued in early May, along with former CEO Cameron Schaefer and Chief Financial Officer Adam Block. The company they once ran claims the trio wasted VMP funds on a record-pressing plant in RiNo that the three own.
All three defendants deny that and are countersuing Vinyl Me, Please for unpaid compensation. In his Nov. 12 countersuit, Kylberg offers a peek into VMP’s pandemic-era finances.
“During 2019 and 2020, VMP had stagnant revenue and customer bases, haphazard internal systems, and was run by an inexperienced and mismanaged executive team and staff,” its former chief strategy officer alleges. “This resulted in VMP losing approximately $1 million in the year 2020, after fully exhausting $3 million in Series A investment capital.”
Kylberg, a Harvard graduate according to his LinkedIn, held executive roles in TV and radio and at Centennial-based Arrow Electronics before joining VMP in 2019. He said that he began there as a volunteer advisor tasked with preparing a brand strategy report.
After VMP co-founder Matt Fiedler was replaced as CEO by Schaefer in late 2020, Kylberg told Schaefer and Block “of the necessity of price increases to save the company from impending bankruptcy,” he recalls now. Then, after his “recommendations were followed, VMP’s profitability stabilized and its growth trajectory improved,” according to his lawsuit this month.
VMP and its lawyers did not answer requests for comment on Kylberg’s recollections.
Rich Kylberg. (LinkedIn)
Though VMP has been profitable since 2021, its board of directors “has been undergoing chaotic transformations and significant mismanagement,” Kylberg said. As a result, the strategy officer was sidelined from strategic decisions and largely ignored, he complains.
So, Kylberg told Schaefer and Block in March that he would be resigning and handed in a resignation letter. The next day, Fiedler fired Kylberg, by Fiedler, according to his lawsuit. Fiedler is said to have cited vague “misconduct, negligence or malfeasance” as reasons for the firing.
“Mr. Kylberg immediately submitted an investigation request to VMP’s human resource leadership team to investigate whether Mr. Fiedler’s false statements were acts of retaliation against Mr. Kylberg,” according to the latter’s countersuit in Denver District Court.
“Mr. Kylberg was informed that no investigation or review would occur and instead, VMP’s human resources department was instructed to launch an investigation into Mr. Kylberg with the specific intent of finding ‘dirt,’” that lawsuit goes on to allege.
Kylberg is seeking $144,000 each from VMP and Fiedler, who he blames for his firing. His lawyers are Stephen Gurr and William Meyer in the Denver office of Polsinelli.
The Vinyl Media Pressing plant at 4201 N. Brighton Blvd. is seen on Thursday, May 2, 2024. (Justin Wingerter/BusinessDen)
An executive who was fired from the Denver subscription service Vinyl Me, Please this year is suing his former employer for $290,000 and claiming he “saved the company from impending bankruptcy” at a time when VMP was losing $1 million per year in investor capital.
Rich Kylberg, of Denver, was let go in March and sued in early May, along with former CEO Cameron Schaefer and Chief Financial Officer Adam Block. The company they once ran claims the trio wasted VMP funds on a record-pressing plant in RiNo that the three own.
All three defendants deny that and are countersuing Vinyl Me, Please for unpaid compensation. In his Nov. 12 countersuit, Kylberg offers a peek into VMP’s pandemic-era finances.
“During 2019 and 2020, VMP had stagnant revenue and customer bases, haphazard internal systems, and was run by an inexperienced and mismanaged executive team and staff,” its former chief strategy officer alleges. “This resulted in VMP losing approximately $1 million in the year 2020, after fully exhausting $3 million in Series A investment capital.”
Kylberg, a Harvard graduate according to his LinkedIn, held executive roles in TV and radio and at Centennial-based Arrow Electronics before joining VMP in 2019. He said that he began there as a volunteer advisor tasked with preparing a brand strategy report.
After VMP co-founder Matt Fiedler was replaced as CEO by Schaefer in late 2020, Kylberg told Schaefer and Block “of the necessity of price increases to save the company from impending bankruptcy,” he recalls now. Then, after his “recommendations were followed, VMP’s profitability stabilized and its growth trajectory improved,” according to his lawsuit this month.
VMP and its lawyers did not answer requests for comment on Kylberg’s recollections.
Rich Kylberg. (LinkedIn)
Though VMP has been profitable since 2021, its board of directors “has been undergoing chaotic transformations and significant mismanagement,” Kylberg said. As a result, the strategy officer was sidelined from strategic decisions and largely ignored, he complains.
So, Kylberg told Schaefer and Block in March that he would be resigning and handed in a resignation letter. The next day, Fiedler fired Kylberg, by Fiedler, according to his lawsuit. Fiedler is said to have cited vague “misconduct, negligence or malfeasance” as reasons for the firing.
“Mr. Kylberg immediately submitted an investigation request to VMP’s human resource leadership team to investigate whether Mr. Fiedler’s false statements were acts of retaliation against Mr. Kylberg,” according to the latter’s countersuit in Denver District Court.
“Mr. Kylberg was informed that no investigation or review would occur and instead, VMP’s human resources department was instructed to launch an investigation into Mr. Kylberg with the specific intent of finding ‘dirt,’” that lawsuit goes on to allege.
Kylberg is seeking $144,000 each from VMP and Fiedler, who he blames for his firing. His lawyers are Stephen Gurr and William Meyer in the Denver office of Polsinelli.
