Kyle Sandler: The Alabama Startup Scam | 215
Scamfluencers
Audible
4.1 • 7.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2026
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kyle Sandler spent much of his life searching – for an identity, for a purpose, for a place where he fit in. But when he discovers he has a gift for sales, everything changes. Kyle takes his talents to a small town in Alabama, where he opens Round House, a startup incubator that promises to put his new community on the tech map. Armed with big-name drops – including an alleged connection to Google – Kyle dazzles wide-eyed investors into opening their wallets. But as the money pours in, cracks begin to form – and an entire town is about to learn just how much their visionary has been taking them for.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Audible subscribers can listen to all our episodes of scam influencers ad-free right now. Join Audible |
| 0:05.8 | today by downloading the Audible app. Sarah, do you ever watch Shark Tank or perhaps its Canadian |
| 0:18.1 | equivalence, Dragonsden. Absolutely. |
| 0:22.1 | I've watched so many episodes of both of them. |
| 0:24.9 | And I feel like Shark Tank, anytime you're in a hotel, it's on. |
| 0:29.1 | Any time you're in a hotel, an episode of Shark Tank is playing. |
| 0:33.2 | And I love it. |
| 0:34.9 | Yeah, Shark Tank is a show exclusively made for hotels. |
| 0:38.5 | I watched a lot of Dragonsden when I was younger, and it felt really good to pretend like I had any idea what the market wanted or how much of it they wanted. |
| 0:47.8 | No, I genuinely became a business expert watching these shows. |
| 0:51.4 | I'm like, 10% from blah, blah, blah. |
| 0:53.9 | I'm like, what the hell they're blah, blah, blah. I don't even |
| 0:54.7 | what the hell they're talking about. What is this? Right. But, you know, you feel like you |
| 0:58.7 | understand. Yeah, it feels good to pretend. Well, today's scammer is one of those suspiciously rich, |
| 1:04.6 | dubiously credentialed investors who love to promise the world to vulnerable entrepreneurs who |
| 1:09.7 | dare to dream big, |
| 1:11.3 | but was only in it for his slice of the pie. |
| 1:17.4 | It's late 2015, and Parker Owen is walking into an office in a small town in Alabama. |
| 1:23.8 | Parker is a former Auburn University student in his early 20s, |
| 1:27.1 | with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a baby face. |
| 1:30.4 | He looks like he just wandered out of a frat house, but today he isn't looking for a party. |
| 1:36.3 | He's walking into a startup incubator, a place made for people like him who have big entrepreneurial dreams. |
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