The CEO Who Destroyed His Company in 24 Hours 

I just feel really bad for the COO, who clearly worked hard, ran his team and the whole east warehouse incredibly well.

Really shows that some people would rather bankrupt their fucking company rather than admit that they’re wrong

It should be illegal to auction items that dont even belong to them. If their computer was there on warranty work or upgrades, and they arent shipping it back or giving you the option to get it back, that product should be considered a stolen and reported to the police.

The image shown at 10:18 in the video, pretty much sums up his role, ambitions, and potential with the company. A cool jacket, confused look, watching someone else do the work, while he just rests his hands on the panel. Essentially just getting in the way while trying to make it look like he's helping. People like this are some of the worst, especially when they move up the hierarchy.

I almost bought a PC from Artesian but I watched one of their live streams and it made me physically ill. Nobody with that much ego on screen is healthy and I'm a nobody and I didn't want my name associated with that. I've ended up building my own PCs for the last decade, and I have zero regrets.

This is why other CEOs spend money on a PR team. He behaves like I expect every other out-of-touch-with-reality CEO to behave, except he was too much of a cheapskate to hire a person to act as his filter.

He thought he was being such a 'badass' when rejecting the winner😒😂

Something funny I read in another video back when the debacle started: An artisan is a worker in a skilled trade, especially making things by hand. An artesian is a well.

They lured me in as a creator by offering a "partnership" that would give steady compensation and give me tons of exposure from social media. All I got was an affiliate code, a shoutout on Twitter and thrown into a group-chat with random streamers in Twitter.

The fact that they can auction off items that don't even belong to the company is one of the most horrifying things I have ever heard. It didn't belong to the company, its not an asset of the company, so the fact that the court can steal them from their owners and sell them to complete strangers, with all the personal information therein, is also terrifying.

I loved the ending, this is definitely a perfect example of "be careful what you wish for". All he wanted was to be famous... and he got what he wanted. People will be talking about him and his company for a long, long, long time.

Artesian really went the "how to ruin your company speedrun" route

The dude literally ran around wearing a Starlord jacket. To me, that says everything about his ego.

Didn't recognize the guy in the thumbnail, but as soon as I saw *that* clip in the intro, I knew exactly what this was about

The most disgusting thing is that all of the personal computer repair jobs will be stolen from people and that they actually stole thousands of pounds from an employee in a fraudulent charge back putting them in debt. It is all just vile and evil that they would be allowed to do either of those things.

What's even better is JayzTwoCents built Kiapiaa a better built and spec'd out PC than anything Artesian Builds would have given her. Also there are hundreds of people's PCs that were sent in for RMAs that are locked up in the warehouses with people's personal info still on them, and no one really knows what is going to happen to them. Apparently one of the buyers of the lots is going to try and triage the RMAs in order to send them back to the people who owned them.

Ego is a hell of a drug and the comedown can be so incredibly harsh.

The fact that I've watched and rewatched the gamers nexus videos is probably why the algorithm recommended this video. DAMN I'm glad it did. Loving your videos bud, instant sub.

A similar business model as Nigel O’Hara ‘department store’ in Portadown, Northern Ireland, who spent years having a glamorous website listing 91,000 items - and didn’t supply anything to people who bought items from him. I was a victim of his, but through luck I paid for my purchases with PayPal, so I got my money back a few months before he declared bankruptcy. The reality was his ‘department store’ was a tiny jewellery shop on Portadown’s High Street. A video on this scammer would be interesting!

I have heard this story a few times, but I'll gladly listen again. Really hope the customers involved get their PCs or money

Otherwise known as, "How to kill your business with a single twitch stream"

I think their downfall was inevitable regardless since as you said they were losing money. The livestream exposing how much of a jackass the CEO is just sped up the process

"... just tipped 360.00 Dollars" i will never understand why some people give people with tons of money even more money, for free

It's insane how cocky some people get when they think nothing bad can happen to them, as if it being a decent person is only an obligation when it benefits them.

Great video. I was in the custom PC industry myself. The business really relied on cheap bulk orders to stay afloat. With the chip shortage as it is, I can't imagine a profitable model. This company was really banking on growth and struck out. I'm certain there's a lot of builders going under that didn't have a fraction of artesian builds' popularity.

It only he had a bit of humility and honored the raffle, they might still be in business. Helping the small guy is great PR.

In general, if you're doing something shady, don't bring attention to yourself, or more specifically, don't be needlessly cruel.

To put that draw into perspective, it is analogous to having a lottery, stating that each ticket is an opportunity to win, putting all tickets into the raffle, then disqualifying the winning draw because they only bought one ticket.

Wow Kira, this was really good! I know little about gaming PCs/Twitch/Builds, but enjoyed this nonetheless. It's the mark if a good content creator.

His COO made this company succesful even with Noah Katz being a complete idiot. That guy is skilled. Im glad he landed on his feet.

Thank you Kira for adding your voice and visibility to this. Gamer’s Nexus has done a lot to investigate what happened and hopes to help get people their systems back, if the group managing the bankruptcy will cooperate. Making sure that predatory businesses like this are called out and shut down is how we fight this. Let’s make sure that when Noah inevitably tries again to be famous, we all remind him, and anyone he’s trying to scam, why he’s famous.

I just loved they had a east and west coast branch, and they shipped the builds from the west to the east to "Fix them".

In the 90s in the UK. The CEO of a major high street jewelers was asked "how is your jewelry so cheap?". He responded "because its cheap crap". About 2 weeks later his company had lost £500 mil. Should be a leaderboard, im sure artesian would be top 3 of all time.

Ive heard alot of ppl say that one stream killed the company. But it was just the last thing, there was so many things killing the company and it was almost gone already

Dude was briefly listed as the co-founder of some hipster lifestyle food company for a while after Artesian Builds, but now he's basically gone into online hiding changing his last name to Novik. (And may have changed it again after that, seems weirdly difficult to find anything considering a bankruptcy and tax evasion occurred). If I had to guess he's eventually going to start another company in Canada or something, seems really into branding himself as a successful CEO.

Noah sounds like a PR team nightmare. I can only imagine what his actual PR team os going through when all of this happened.

My mans tried to be famous, and while doing so held a PC giveaway where the winner wasn't famous enough. Now he's bankrupt. Get rekt, nerdlord.

Good job on the transitions in this video. The flow felt nice for my brain :)

I wonder if he meant Artisan when he created & named his company Artesian.

It's incredible how quickly someone can tank their reputation into the ground. Great video!

Even if I had been watching them at their peak, I would have found it pretty boring that they're building PCs for successful people. That to me is like gifting a car to Jake Paul.

It has truly been astonishing to see how many gaming companies and fellow-traveling PC makers have such shitty CEOs, with boards of directors and frequently the largest institutional shareholders being complicit in retaining these garbage people. No large institutional shareholders were involved with retaining Noah Katz at Artesian Builds, but in any case he should have been jettisoned from AB and then should have gone into a different career such as venom extraction, demolition preparation or unbridled con-artistry.

I recently got defrauded by a “reputable” company who filed bankruptcy and is refusing to give refunds, yet they’re still taking orders. It’s sad there is no protection for us consumers while the wealthy business owners get to run away from their debt

Ah, the pursuit of fame above all else: The original Gypsy curse

Imagine having a good business but your own ego is the only thing that ruins it

New law needs to be put in place to protect consumers of their purchased goods in cases like these. Like require companies to reimburse for unfulfilled orders AND ID tag the orders in-progress so that IF the company goes bankrupt, customers can get their stuff (...at least as-is).

There should be a law that regulates that in case of a bankruptcy customers should get paid first. That would also have the benefit of partners more closely monitoring the companys they loan money to.

3:19 The clear look of a guy who's just begging for his company to be flushed down the toilet.

Glad youre feeling well enough to pour content onto us my friend!

Just one look at that guy's smug-ass face tells me all I need to know about his integrity.

Lol changing his name. This reminds me of a wise quote I heard once upon a time. "You only ever get one name... use it wisely." - Or apparently, you'll end up needing to change it

@3:24 Well... Hello there, happy merchant!

Really hope the owners who bought their builds or sent them in for repair could prevent their property being auctioned off to clear Artesian's debts.

It's honestly seems like Noah wanted to be Linus Sebastian without the years of hard work or charisma. People like Tech Influencers like Linus, Marques, and Dave 2D because they're all passionate about tech first and influencers second.

Wait is this the guy who wouldn't fulfill winners because they weren't big enough?

12:10 Okay now that's just good ol' ponzi

Thought this was a Sunnyv2 video from the thumbnail

From what I understood it's kinda reverse in the US law. To be a legal marketing giveaway and not illegal lottery there should be no "consideration" (substantial payment in money or in kind just for entering.) Katz admitting live it's about participants "earning him money" (and other stuff) make it sound very much like the second case...

Cant wait for the summoning salt video of this category

“Greed, narcissism, and arrogance” the perfect description for many content creators on RU-vid, present company excluded.

Love your videos, Kira you really know how to describe things to fit the situation

Keep your eyes on Overkill Computers, they are showing some of the same poor management issues and poor legal advice as Artesian and might implode as well.

Artesian Builds had 2 HQ's, west and east. West HQ (where this CEO was) were capable of buiding 2-3 PC's per day, while East HQ was building 10-15 PC's per day with the same number of employees. And also guality of West HQ builds was horrifying... West HQ had return rate of 10% of all PC's shipped, while East HQ had return rate of less than 0.2%. And all those PC's that were built for big streamers live on Twich in West HQ where shipped to East HQ, where they rewired whole system, beacuse West HQ's cable management was so horrible that those PC's had to be shipped to East HQ for repairs before they could be shipped to big Twitch streamers. Without East HQ, this company would be already gonne long time ago...

All it takes, is one person with way to big visions or way too much self appreciation. I feel sad for the employees. Not only did they have to put up with Noah's ego and behavior, they were also the ones facing the customers on a daily basis and ate now the ones having to look for a new way to support themselves by finding a new job.

Thats weird cause I have a friend who won one of those ambassador giveaways and he was under 1k followers. They still sent him the pc no issues. Seems like there was more then analytics contributing to it.

You and jackfrags, live in the same county.

I'm so glad Discount Star Lord lost his business. He had some great ideas of how to grow a business but should have stayed off-screen because It's getting pretty easy to spot a narcissist these days.

I knew a lot of this train wreck, but I never heard about the push for Twitch subs. Goes beyond slimy and hits cringe level 6.

Great video Kira. Thanks for documenting this into the yt platform forever.

Creators not vetting their sponsors, a tale as old as RU-vid itself

I just went to look up what the term "dumpster fire" meant. Just as I anticipated... there is a picture of Noah Katz... "See Artesian Builds for an example"

When are you making Kirtesian Builds? Heard if you market to the crypto bros you can make big bux! Good luck man!

It’s probably because he didn’t know the difference between artesian and artisan.

I've been following the story on Gamers Nexus from the original announcement. It's been such a shitshow. The more eyeballs that get on this story, the better. Noah Katz destroyed the whole thing.

All of these prebuilt PC companies price rape their customers. If you see one of them sellling a prebuilt gaming PC for $2K USD, chances are you can build it yourself in less than an hour for $1400 USD. Artesian Builds, META PC, IBuyPower, it doesn't matter. They all do it.

"Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall"

Similar but different to Chronicles of Elyria, with it's crowdfunding advertised to develop a game, but instead it was all just used for marketing, later on confessing that it was decided at the beginning of Kickstarters to use all funds to gain official investors and publishers, lying to the private investors aka the people who crowdfunded. At this point I'd welcome a gaming regulatory body that helps avoid these unwanted outcomes, especially when there was no intent to scam and simply stupid scheming to success.

Anyone else thought this was a SunnyV2 video because of the thumbnail?

How could someone at the top of a company, be so incapable of running it

Me breaking in to steal computer parts

oh hey thats me! im the creator wooooooo

It's fine that he wanted to be at the forefront of his business, and he would have done fine if that were the only gripe. It's everything else he did that kinda... messed everything up.

Fame is truly an infection to the human soul and Noah Katz is a case study of this.

I remember them making TWO PC's for a vtuber. The cases they used were absurdly huge and it took FOREVER for them to work on it despite the recipient communicating frequently. Both stopped working and had many issues within the first week of her using it.

Before watching I had the idea that this guy inherited the company then immediately proceeded to burn it to the ground. The fact that he could achieve success is much more damning when he destroyed it just for his own sins.

I wanted to start a PC building company, way back in 2005. I called it Demon Built. I had some badass builds but the margins were very small. It makes me feel good that even a big company with millions of dollars failed too. haha.

It NEVER cease to amaze me how these people ALWAYS get funding to do their scams but running an honest business as a small business...i didn't even get approved for the PPP loans. What the f**k is up with this trash in this country??

I had never heard of Great Value brand Ashton Kutcher until he made an ass of himself.

Last year I was looking for a custom PC, and looked up a couple independent builders, a couple local companies, and then heard about AB from Suris, subsequently deciding to check them out. I'm budget conscious first, so I never got past the initial quote. It was almost 1.5 times the price of the company I ended up going through, noped out of there so fast! When I found out about all of this I was so glad I never purchased from them

He put the gun point blank onto his foot "it'll miss" he thought and pulled the trigger....he didn't miss.

There were some employees that stayed until it closed trying to finish builds and ship em out. If they would've had another owner it would've been a good company. He was getting employees to buy parts and after he paid him, he would get paypal to refund screwing over the guy buying the parts. These are parts that costed anywhere from 600-1500 dollars. He would also do that to customer trying to get a refund. Just a horrible greedy man.

I heard about Artesian Builds during the whole debacle but not with this level of detail. Thank you for your video!

"I wish to be famous" "Now you are Noah..." ABSOLUTELY BARBARIC

If I recall correctly, the inventory (Lots 1 & 2 of the Bankruptcy Auction) was purchased by a fellow RU-vidr (I forget their name) who then worked with a team to reach out to every customer to ensure they were made whole by sending them their systems back, building their pending systems with the inventory, or refunding them out of pocket. (They plan on selling off the remaining inventory on their website and eBay to recoup the costs) They said in a live stream only one person declined any kind of compensation, writing off their loss as "Stupidity Tax" or something. (I believe it was also said the customer was a millionaire). Maybe one day KiraTV or any other documentary RU-vid channel will do an update video to close the book on Artesian Builds.

This happened with an airsoft business in my hometown. Owner, and his wife treating the business like their personal piggybank, employees not being paid, customers getting the runaround on their guns entrusted with them for repairs, and custom dip paint jobs. Until it went belly up.

I have a few theories on the "threshold" way of rejecting winners and how badly it was handled. 1. Maybe someone did tell Noah or he was somehow aware that he could stipulate the qualifying social media metrics prior to the giveaways, but Noah wanted the ability to say it was open to all ambassadors, that way gullible streamers keep signing up to AB's shitty ambassador program and become free billboards. 2. Because AB was literally accepting anyone to maximize marketing, the ambassador program was too big to manage, and it would take too much time to check who didn't qualify and remove those from the list before the giveaways. Remember they did have previously stated qualifications some did not meet, i.e., not having AB panels/overlays on the streamers' channels, but add to this having to check social media metrics for possibly hundreds or thousands of people, and do it every month. There's no way Noah had enough people assigned to this, if he had anyone doing it at all. 3. I'm giving Noah too much credit, he wasn't even thinking, and was just winging it. He ignored any complaints in chat, while noticing the people who enjoyed the spectacle, feeling the power of a king slighting his peasants. See the victorious fist pump when saying "there's the reroll". He was just a clueless dick.

This is another case of “play stupid games, win stupid prizes”. I’m no business expert, but I’m 99% certain Noah could’ve achieved the fame & respect he wanted in the PC & Twitch communities if he just ran his business with integrity & honesty; now he shot himself in the foot & instead of accepting the loss he’s trying to move like he did nothing wrong or at the very least like what happened wasn’t that big of a deal 🤦🏾‍♂️

I remember watching all this fall apart pretty much live, it was amazing to see.

Imagine being a technician on the East Coast for these guys producing ten times more of the final product and producing a higher quality product getting paid less than the west coast team who has 3 times the staff and produces way less / poor quality

Changing the winner of any competition because they aren’t who you wanted is at best, REALLY bad form and at worst, probably illegal. It’s not the small creators fault they are a small creator. We were all small once. Seriously not cool, so I have to admit I’m glad that AB has folded. Hopefully the staff can find a better company to work for as losing your job always sucks.