Emotion Mining Company
Reviews and Complaints

Emotion Mining Company, announced sometime back that it has constituted its new Board of Directors along with key executive changes. Though founded in 1987, the company has been firing on empty for 30 years save the year it brought in a turn around executive who helped things look up and then shortchanged him too.

Thomas Snyder, the controversial founder of the company who has been accused by several investors of shortchanging them was forced to step down from the board.

The disillusioned former President & CEO Satish Jha, an early stage investor and start-up mentor, who was brought in to lead EMCI in 2015 and worked there full time until the company reached the next level has also relinquished his roles as the President and CEO.

During his tenure Satish Jha was known for bringing in a new executive team, revamping the Board, bringing in fresh investments, leading the development of technology and acquiring long term business for the company. He was known to have created a momentum for EMCI and many investors want him back to run it. Harry (Hawk) Furman has been most vocal about getting Satish Jha back to led EMCI.

It is understood that after housecleaning at EMCI Satish Jha fell out of favours with the founders while other shareholders wanted him and has now moved on to the chairmanship of some other startups. That leaves the victims of Thomas Snyder's machinations with little hope of redressing their grievances.

My attention has been drawn to a few complaints about emotion mining company that portray me as its president and ceo.

Please note that after months of persuasion I had agreed to steer the company and i did what i could over nine months. i have not been engaged with it since april 2016.

There are several complaints that suggest I am still associated with it and they must be taken down.

We must improve the verifiability of complainants and complaints. Its true that most complainants speak publicly when they feel helpless and often the aggrieved are powerless against the predators. However, we need to find a better way to resolve such disputes.

Meanwhile, appreciate if all the items that have reference to emotion mining company with my association are removed at the earliest.

Thank you

there are two posts on 8/6/16, not made by me, someone used my name to complain about Tom Snyder and his wife Jennifer, and their company EM, please take down any post that uses my name, like these two, as i did not write this, i would like this done now, as it damages others and you now know they are not legitimate. please let me know if i need to do anything else, [protected]@yahoo.com
i would like to know which computer they come from, so i can know who did this, using my name without authorization. thank you, maria

I worked for Tom Snyder at Emotion Mining from August, 2006 through September, 2008. I was a professional consultant hired to provide executive coaching to Mr. Snyder and develop a business plan to make the business a commercial success. In short, we failed.

I found Mr. Snyder to be unwilling to take advice from me or others unless it was advice he agreed with. New ideas or ideas for Mr. Snyder to do things differently were ignored or dismissed. My role changed to one of helping with prospect and customer relations. We were quite disappointed that Mr. Snyder did not permit us to reach out to his former clients to explore additional engagements or referrals to other companies. It was if his previous successes where sealed off from his future. It lead us to question his customer relations skills or the veracity of his success claims. We never explored these suspicions and worked to find new clients.

It was clear there were financial problems when payment of my monthly invoices were delayed. I recall calling by phone to discover that Mr. Snyder was spending the Christmas season with his family on some a Caribbean or Bahamas island while my invoices were aging for lack of cash. I chose to continue working, with the expectation that we would land a few new clients and/or Tom would increase his cash investment in the business, and I would be paid. Neither happened.

There were no disputes to any of my invoices. He simply did not pay them. I stopped working for Emotion Mining. Ultimately, I, along with other Emotion Mining contractors and officers, hired an attorney to press for collections. I was paid a partial amount of what I was owed.

Mr. Snyder seems to ignore the realities of corporate law or personal responsibilities when it comes to running his business. His intellect as a psychologist is apparent, but his respect for business processes to commercialize his intellect is a fatal flaw.

Barry Neagle
President, Neagle & Associates, LTD.

This all took place over a decade ago, so I’m missing certain details, but the ones I can remember, coupled with my overall impressions from that experience, all clearly point to Tom Snyder as a huge detriment to Emotion Mining as a business. While credit is certainly due to his brilliance in developing the EM concept and methodology, in my view it is simply not possible to overstate that Tom’s involvement in operations has adversely affected Emotion Mining’s past performance and constrains its future prospects.

I learned about Emotion Mining in late 2003 through someone I met at a professional networking group. Shortly after, I was introduced to Tom and Liam and became very excited about EM’s potential in a field I’d worked in for nearly 20 years at the time: consumer marketing and brand strategy. Soon I was swept up in a wave of meetings, covering everything from technology and prospects to discussions of potential office space. It was my first experience with what felt like a startup—except this was no startup. It had been started years ago, with bright prospects and big clients (Coca-Cola, American Express’s investment division IDS, and more).

The fact that nothing had actually happened in many years should have tipped me off that something was amiss. But I was too enchanted with the potential and the idea of being in on the ground floor of something big. This was an idea that mattered deeply to me both personally and professionally. On the personal side, I come from a family of psychology professors: my stepfather, Silvan Tomkins, was a pioneer in the field of emotions, and my mother, Rae Carlson, had worked to bring his ideas to mainstream psychology. So I was both uncommonly well grounded in the underlying psychological issues (for a marketer) and intrigued by advancing this family legacy. Professionally, I saw tremendous potential for EM within a wide range of application areas. Within consumer marketing alone, I thought EM could revolutionize the field and perhaps even lead to a dream career for me.

Swept up in the startup vibe, I spent enormous amounts of time with EM. Mostly meetings with Tom and Liam, but I also volunteered lots of my time on other things. I can recall taking initiative to write promotional copy, draft a Power Point presentation aimed at consumer marketing companies, and network with potential prospects. My role wasn’t clearly defined, which was naive on my part, but I was treated as a trusted insider and assured that I was a vital member of the team who would be rewarded when the company succeeded.

Within a few months I brought in a client: a partner at a leading consulting firm who was interested in using EM on a larger engagement with a client of the firm. It was an interesting project, and a time for all hands on deck. We dropped everything, did the project, and pulled together a presentation that was extremely well received by both our consulting firm client and his firm’s client. It also resulted in a small follow-on project ($20K). To my knowledge, these were the first paid projects Emotion Mining had had in at least five years.

Over the course of these projects, though, I began to experience instances of extraordinarily unprofessional, even bizarre, behavior by Tom. I can recall the following, though there were many more instances:
• Repeatedly belittling and harassing a hardworking and talented colleague (Liliana).
• Contradicting himself repeatedly, then responding with outrage and derision when asked about the inconsistency between opposing positions he’d expressed with equal fervor. This behavior directly affected the quality of client work, in areas like coding responses and developing the project presentation, as well as breeding frustration and sapping morale.
• Telling odd stories at inappropriate times with clients, to the point where the remaining team members would have to strategize about how to redirect and salvage the moment.

In my own case, I recall a time when we were working on the presentation for the first project. We’d been working nonstop for many long days. I was expressing a perspective grounded in the context of the client (a B2C company), and in my own expertise as a consumer marketer. While I forget his exact wording, I can never forget how Tom dismissed my perspective as having no value whatsoever. The only thing that mattered was the EM methodology. Claiming to have contextual knowledge and insight was absurd, in his view, and added nothing. Essentially: how dare I? Not only was this extremely strange and insulting, it showed no regard for either me--or for the best interests of the client. It took all I could do to continue working on the project, but I rallied as a professional invested in delivering for the client, and for the team.

And then there was the money issue. As I recall, I was paid promptly for the first project: a small commission, though I received no compensation whatsoever for my time on the project. On the second project I was promised a 20% commission ($4, 000). In the early months after the project finished I was continually assured that I’d be paid soon. Eventually, sometime within the first year, I think, I was paid $1, 000 at Liam’s insistence. It would be four years before I was finally paid in full. Again, it was at Liam’s insistence.

As a result of my experience with Tom, I stopped working on Emotion Mining later in 2004. Though I believed strongly in its potential (and still do to this day), I could no longer work with someone who treated me with disrespect, nor with someone who wasted my time without compensating me. Moreover, my doubts about Tom made me strongly question EM’s viability. However, I thought it might be possible that someone with strong skills but a different temperament might be able to hang in there long enough to help create the kind of change needed to make Emotion Mining a success. And I very much hoped that would be possible, so I introduced Liam to my friend Dirk Coburn. Unfortunately, I understand Dirk's experience was hauntingly similar, and he eventually left Emotion Mining. Though the details of his experience undoubtedly differ slightly from mine, at the core is the sad, but all too familiar story of a founder who can’t get out of his own way.

Tracy Carlson

My name is Maria D. Furman,

I invested $50, 000 in EMC stock almost 10 years ago .

Since then, I have never received a stock certificate, never been invited to or notified of stockholder meetings, never seen any real financial statements, not seen real minutes of shareholder meetings, not seen any info as to a bank account where assets are segregated for the business. I have hired a lawyer in the past and spent several thousand dollars, just to get some information, but what I got was “created for me” with no real backup.

I don’t know what Tom Snyder has done with the investor money he as collected and continues to try to collect from others but he is not running a business according to corporate rules and procedures and not complying with securities laws. There are no real financials, balance sheets, bank statements, profit and loss statements, the only thing I saw was a spread sheet with some numbers and no back up data to verify its accuracy as it was “created “ on an ad hoc basis.

Tom has been operating this way for over 20 years, trying to find people to invest in his “company” that he runs out of his own bank account, many have been duped, like me, into believing this was a lawful company with an honest founder, and it is not, according to my experience . This method of operating is not legal and therefore should be investigated for possible securities law violations and fraudulent record keeping, as I have never seen any evidence of the validity of anything he chooses to show investors or new prospects.

Although Tom Snyder has a PHD and an MD, and is a very smart man, he claims to not understand financial matters and not have the time to focus on that, I offered to pay for an accountant to help get me the information I would like to have as an investor but he declined.

Tom has shown a consistent pattern of misrepresenting himself, his company, and his numbers, and has avoided communicating with investors, he does not comply with corporate rules or procedures, record keeping, auditing, k’1’s, etc.

It is my hope that some legal action will be taken so that he does not continue to perpetuate this fraudulent behavior in the future and that he is required to pay back those he misled into investing in him…

Sincerely,
Maria Furman

I, Clark Nesselrodt, submit the following facts related to my work as acting CEO of Emotion Mining Company (EMC) and as co-founder of the related startup business, Emovera, under the direction of Dr. Tom Snyder from April 2012 until August 2013. Upon first meeting Dr. Snyder, I was impressed by the substance of his inventions and the intellectual property held by EMC. With clear applications and a proven track-record in the field of consumer brand research, I felt great synergy given my near decade of experience working for and representing the very agencies and brands which would be the target audience of his consumer research tool. Further, Dr. Snyder’s early ideas for translating the EMC technology into a consumer-facing tool for personal discovery and development (tentatively named Emovera), were deeply resonant with me.

Shortly after beginning my work with Dr. Snyder, I began to have concerns about the situation in which I found myself. Though impressive in concept, the technology platform supporting the EMC business was outdated, and it seemed impossible to sell services to potential partners with such a antiquated product. However, the greater concern I had involved Dr. Snyder himself. It seemed that whenever a new opportunity or concept would emerge that could potentially give us a forward path to generate revenue and accelerate our efforts, Dr. Snyder would either categorically denounce the possibilities, or worse—allow us to make several weeks of progress, and then eventually undermine the work. Dr. Snyder’s erratic and undesirable behaviors directly impeded my ability to positively impact our business operations.

Though clear that the core business model could not be sustained, I remained with the company for period of time, which I now regret, given my enthusiasm about the consumer-facing business model known as Emovera. I continue to feel even now that the technology and business that I lead Dr. Snyder in developing could have a transformational impact on consumers, and yield financial success as a standalone business. However, the process of building such a business with Dr. Snyder proved to be impossible. At this point, approximately 18-months into my tenure with the company, I gave up hope and informed Dr. Snyder that I no longer wished to have any involvement with him or his professional ventures. The following bullets represent just a few specific examples of events, behaviors and tendencies which lead me to believe that success for EMC or any related leader or opportunity would never be possible so long as Dr. Snyder were playing any significant role in the company:
It became clear to me that Dr. Snyder was employing psychiatric techniques in our collaboration which I felt were inappropriate for the workplace—and further, as a tool for manipulation and control. I was made incredibly uncomfortable with work dialogues with him in which he asked me personal questions—later using the information I had volunteered to manipulate me into doing what he wished.
Dr. Snyder’s sense of workplace professionalism was non-existent. He made remarks related to gender and the physical attributes of others that would have been grounds for legal action in any traditional workplace.
Dr. Snyder made many promises of compensation to me which were never honored. I was promised at least 20% equity in EMC, which was never delivered.
Tom frequently demanded and manipulated me into using my own personal funds to support what he felt to be the priorities of our business. These funds were never reimbursed as promised.
There were many examples of exceptional work product and subsequent inventions created by me on behalf our business efforts, which Dr. Snyder belittled and demeaned as being worthless. It was very difficult for him to allow others to shine. It was his common practice to tell me he liked and approved of my work leading up to a meeting or business pitch, and then show up to the meeting having completely reworked the deliverable into something he preferred—which was always nonsensical and ineffective.
Dr. Snyder prided himself on being an expert communicator, but in nearly every conversation we ever had with third-parties, would alienate the other people present by rambling on in non-sensical diatribes which were indicative of his inability to properly function in a contemporary professional setting.

It has remained my hope for these last three years that eventually, some series of events would place Dr. Snyder into the subservient and powerless role necessary for him at EMC, and lead to business success for what I continue to feel is genuinely valuable and actionable technology and IP. It is my further hope that the promises made to me by Dr. Snyder and proper compensation reflecting my 18-months of traumatizing service to the business would be delivered to me at that time.

I do not offer this statement as part of any personal vendetta toward Dr. Tom Snyder. ThoughI do feel he is guilty of manipulation and deception with many individuals beyond just myself, I have forgiven an moved on. It would be my preference to not be involved in these proceedings. However, having learned that yet another business professional has offered years of his life to this cause, and knowing that Dr. Snyder is once again seeking to destroy the progress that has been made and possibilities that now exist, I felt I must speak out to share my experiences.

Best,
CN