While campaigning to be the Republican Presidential nominee, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, a long-time bachelor, introduced the world to his girlfriend. After much speculation regarding the 58-year-old’s love life, Scott revealed a relationship with a Charleston woman he said he started dating a year prior. Later that week, Scott dropped out of the race. It’s unclear if Scott dropped out of the race because of his girlfriend, Mindy Noce’s past, and much of that past is related to the startup community in Washington, DC.
In 2017, Mindydivorced Peter Jay Noce, who was born in 1953. Twenty years ago, he called himself Peter Noce, but in the last decade, he started referring to himself as Jay Noce. Why? Because it’s harder to hit a moving target. Let me explain. In 1999, Peter Noce, a former Consultant at Arthur Andersen (now Accenture), founded Etensity, a technology consulting company. These were the heady days of the dot-com boom. Washington was at the apex of our startup power. The list of legitimate DC VCs with offices in the DC Area included:
-
- ABS Capital
- Blue Water Capital
- Boulder Ventures
- Century
- CIT GAP
- Columbia Capital
- Core Capital
- Edison
- Fairfax Ventures
- FBR Ventures
- Flash Forward
- Grotech
- In-Q-Tel Inc
- Lazard Technology Partners
- Mercator
- Monumental
- New Atlantic Ventures
- New Enterprise Assoc
- New Markets Venture
- Novak Biddle
- Paladin
- Questmark
- Steve Walker Venture Partners
- TDF
- Updata
- Winston Partners
In those days, DC had multiple unicorns like AOL, UUNet, PSINet, Net2000, Trusted Information Systems, Digex, Proxicom, Appnet, Web Methods, Morino Associates, VM Software, Landmark Software, Micro Strategies.. and the list went on and on.
It was a happy time for DC Startups… DC Tech was up there with the big guys… Silicon Valley, and the Route 128 corridor in MA. We were big; in those heady times, the money kept flowing, and VCs were scrambling to write checks. It was a seller’s market, and the buyers bought in bulk. Any Steve Jobs wannabe, wearing a black mock turtle neck with a business plan penned on a napkin and 10 PowerPoint slides, got funded.
Left to Right, Peter Noce, Mindy Noce, Tim Scott
Yup, regardless of resume, education, or lack of scruples, anyone could raise money. In 1999, Peter Noce proved that as he set up shop in Vienna, Virginia.
According to the Washington Post, Etensity raised roughly $40 million in funding, with at least $15 million from European venture capital group Syntek Capital AG. By July of 2000, Noce bragged to Infoworld that Etensity had 400 employees, with employment peaking at 450 employees by the end of 2000.
The company’s Over-The-Top Employee Benefit Programs attracted employees that included:
- Raise the Roof – $10,000 towards house purchase (verified fact)
- Hot Wheels – $400 towards car lease payment (verified fact)
- Company Concierge (verified fact)
- Company Masseuse (verified fact)
- Condos (owned by the company for use by employees yet used mostly by Noce):
- Outer Banks, NC (Hearsay from two sources)
- Aspen, CO (Hearsay from two sources)
- Hollywood, CA (Hearsay from one source)
- A Company-owned Bertram Yacht (Hearsay from one source)
- A Company Jet (Hearsay from one source)
In January 2001, the company acquired the assets of IT consulting company Onesoft after Onesoft filed for bankruptcy. The bankruptcy filing listed Onesoft’s assets at $1.5 million and liabilities that exceeded $13.4 million. This vanishing investor treasure was a precursor and nothing compared to what would come.
The Onesoft acquisition portends to the Peter Noce pattern of picking up assets while leaving creditors high and dry. According to court documents filed at the time, Noce and Etensity cheaply picked up Onesoft’s assets while Creditors were left holding a large bag of nothing. Onesoft owed $2 million to Leasing Technologies International, $1 million to Dell Computer, $1 million to Compaq, and over $800 thousand to Herndon-based Iormyx.
In Mid 2001, Noce’s house of cards began to fall… The Washington Business Journal reported in May of 2001 that the company laid off 58 (23%) of its staff.
A former employee told me a story about the days when the decline began. According to her, she was summoned into a co-worker’s office. He immediately put his finger to his lips, making the universal, don’t speak sign, and then he wrote out a note: “Our offices are bugged.” Crazy town was getting crazier. According to her management, bugging employee offices was just one of the many creepy things happening in the company.
Several employees related that the company condos and boats were rarely available for corporate use… they were virtually private toys used by Noce. The investors started asking tough questions but by then it was too late, much of their treasure had evaporated.
On May 8, 2002, according to the Washington Post, after laying off 90% of the company’s employees, the company filed for bankruptcy and re-emerged as DDLabs. Can you guess who was the principal of DDLabs….. Peter Noce. Noce purchased the assets of his former company, Etensity, for $500 thousand. At the time, Etensity’s Chapter 11 filing listed the company’s assets at $13 million and liabilities at $97 million. Not a bad deal for Noce, picking up $13 million in assets for half a million while shedding $97 million in liabilities.
In 2003, I was on the board of a company called Ikimbo. The CEO recently switched our outsourcing contract to a little company called DDLabs. Ikimbo was struggling, and the CEO, a former schoolmate of Noce’s, wanted the board to agree to a wacky deal. He wanted us to “sell” our company to DDLabs for no money. DDLabs was offering virtually nothing to take Ikimbo off the investor’s hands. The board fired the CEO and named me CEO. Knowing how Noce works, it shouldn’t have surprised me when I found emails between the former CEO and Noce outlining a side deal with my predecessor. A deal that if he could get the board to give away the company, the former Ikimbo CEO would receive a significant ownership position of DDLabs (BTW, finding that letter cost the former CEO the bulk of his severance package… thank you very much).
One day, the CEO of a competitor, let’s call him Larry, because that is his name, called me and asked me if I knew a person. The person he named was Ikimbo’s product manager. When I asked Larry why he wanted to know about my product manager, he told me he had Ikimbo’s product plans authored by our product manager. I asked him how he obtained our plans. He told me that a salesperson from an offshore software development company cold-called him. When Larry asked if the company, DDLabs, had any experience in the messaging space, he replied yes and sent our proprietary product plans to the CEO of one of our competitors.
Knowing what I know now about Noce’s ethics, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that his company was distributing Ikimbo’s Intellectual Property… our product plans to help solicit new business for DDLabs from Ikimbo competitors. It’s Ironic that when we shut down Ikimbo, the largest creditor left in a lurch was DDLabs.
Sometimes, after starting DDLabs, Noce left DC for Charleston, SC. Where he’s continued to do business and apparently avoided paying his debts. Noce spent the last 20 years in courtrooms. In startup unit economic terms, the Life Time Value (LTV) Noce was like hitting the jackpot for a lawyer. Check out this small sample of Noce’s courtroom appearances.
- Burkley v. Noce (2012)
- Peter Noce et al v. Amtrust International Underwriters, Ltd. et al
- THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA, In The Court of Appeals
- Valley Printing, vs Bravas in 2015 for $1.2million
According to Curnchbase, in 2017, Jay Noce or Peter Noce, or Peter Jay Noce, or whatever he’s calling himself as you’re reading this, founded BravasLive, and according to the Dail Mail,
Republican dropout Tim Scott’s new girlfriend Mindy Noce and her ex-husband Peter were sued over $1.2million ‘shell and sham’ scheme involving their company Bravas Partners in 2017
The article reports that in 2015, a European company, Valley Partners of Bingley England, paid $1.2 million for 10 percent of Bravas. History repeats itself as a European investor in a Peter Jay Noce company declared they were cheated. The filing accuses the Noces of creating two shell companies, Wild Dunes Investments and Beresford Creek Holdings, presumably to shelter and hide cash.
That article goes on to state Mindy Noce filed for divorce in 2017, blaming the destruction of her marriage on her husband’s heavy drinking and opioid abuse. It also quotes that Tim’s girlfriend has expensive habits, stating in a filing that her monthly spending was $11,568.
Ms. Noce lives in an $8 million estate in the desirable Daniel Island community next to Charleston SC. Her divorce settlement included over $2 million in cash and $9,500 spousal support.
More recently, a Berkeley County judge ordered Peter Jay Noce to pay $1.8 million to a former Hollywood script editor. In a separate decision, Noce was handed $300 thousand over a “misappropriated” investment.
Are financial shenanigans lucrative? Property records show that Noce’s home (pictured below) on Daniel Island is a seven-bedroom, 8 Baths, 9,556 square feet home that Zillow estimates is valued at $6.5 million.
Want to have some fun? Google “Jay Noce” and see how many profiles he’s created to make it hard to hit a moving target.
