EXCLUSIVE: yet another Forbes 30 under 30 alum pled guilty to fraud today. Energy startup mIQroTech’s founder Meade L. just entered a plea bargain for defrauding investors of $7.1 million with pitch decks that allegedly lied about revenue & contracts.
Here’s an exclusive look inside his pitch deck from 2019:
mIQrotech was founded in 2017 by Meade Lewis after working “as CTO at three energy startup” (according to his Forbes 30 under 30 profile). Their mission was to eliminate leaks and emissions from oil & gas pipelines using smart sensors.
mIQrotech’s patented “all-in-one” IoT device claimed to monitor 7 variables critical to pipeline health, and predict leaks with “96% accuracy.” Of course, the deck mentions AI, claiming mIQrotech could predict hazards “days, months, even years of ahead of time.”
The real smoking gun is the revenue / customers slide: According to the federal indictment, Lewis claimed their systems were actively monitoring lines for large energy co’s, reaching $6.8M ARR by 2020. This 2019 deck claimed $63.5k MRR and 32k miles of LOIs. In reality, mIQrotech never crossed $100k in revenues, and none of it was recurring. Lewis later told investors Chevron agreed to invest $4M (this was untrue).
mIQrotech raised over $7M in an oversubscribed Series A round led by Page Angel Investor Fund, Cathesix Ventures, Plug and Play, and other VCs + angel networks. The 2021 Series A announcement claimed the company was “approaching unicorn status” after their Series A (another untruth). In 2022, Lewis was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 energy list. Today, Lewis faces up to 20 years in federal prison and has agreed to forfeit over $7.1 million after entering a plea bargain.
See the full mIQrotech pitch deck (and other famous cases of fraud like Theranos) exclusively at bestpitchdeck.com/fails