Delve - Fake Compliance as a Service - Part II - Day 2 of 5

How Delve stole from a fellow YC company who was also their client

I had to take this ‘episode’ into a completely different direction at the very last minute, so I’m sorry for dropping it this late.

Yesterday I reached out to the Sim.ai team to ask them if they ever entered into an agreement with the Delve team, given the fact that I previously pointed out that Delve’s Pathways was clearly built on top of Sim.ai (also known as SimStudio or Sim).

They got back to tell me they had not. In fact, they provided evidence that shows that Delve stole Sim’s intellectual property after Sim became a Delve customer, lied about it, and then told Sim they were no longer interested because there was no ROI. This all happened while Delve was making bucketloads of money off of SimStudio Pathways.

By combining the evidence I collected together with what the sim.ai team provided, I will show that Delve has stolen an open-source company’s tech by violating their license and then making a lot of money with it.

Let’s take a step back first

In my first article I wrote a few things about SimStudio, which I already suspected to be ‘stolen’ given that there was no attribution.

Snippet from section 2.3 (experience with Delve - Post-Compliance)

They promised they were about to ship new features and products that would solve our problems. They showed us a demo of a no-code automation tool called Pathways that would get rid of all the manual work we complained about, which they had already shown during their demo many months before.

They kept talking about it as if they had built it themselves, so I verified by asking explicitly if they did. They told me they had “built it from the ground up”.

Which was peculiar, since I knew this tool to be SimStudio, which I recognized because I used it in the past. Below you can see Delve’s version on the left, and a regular SimStudio deployment on the right:

Left: Delve Pathways, Right: SimStudio (Sim.ai)

Snippet from section 7.3 (Product - Pathways)

The only thing that looked remotely useful and that had some actual AI going was the Pathways (workflows) module, which we were demoed twice while being a Delve client.

Sadly we didn’t get access since it was a much higher cost tier and meant for enterprises.

Luckily it was as easy as browsing to app.delve.co/w to get access. That was the case for a while at least. They seem to have fixed that now.

Like I mentioned at the start of the article, their claim to have built this themselves had left a really bad taste in my mouth since I knew this was just SimStudio:

…

I don’t know what type of deal they have going with the Sim guys, but no attribution when using an open source project and then claiming you built it yourself is really, really bad form! Especially to ask as much money as they do for a product they basically seem to have stolen.

My email to the sim team

A few days after publishing the first part, I thought it was weird that the Sim team hadn’t made a public statement yet.

In my mind I suspected that no response meant that a deal must have been in place. An early-stage company would respond angrily and publicly after all, whereas a company that had a deal with Delve in place might choose to not say anything out of fear of being associated with them.

But it still didn’t sit right with me. I had to know.

So I reached out to the sim team over email:

My email to the sim.ai team

Do you have an agreement in place with Delve that allows them to white-label SimStudio without attribution?

I am about to further expose that Delve has been selling ‘Pathways’ to enterprises using a slightly modified version of Sim, and would appreciate your input.

— DeepDelver

Sim’s response

To my utter surprise, I received a response:

No, we didn't know Delve was selling 'Pathways' to enterprises and we didn't have an agreement to white-label Sim without attribution.

However, we knew they planned to use Sim for something and later tried unsuccessfully to sell them an agreement. Here's the entire timeline:

> Sim was in YC X25 and we met Delve to try and sell them a platform to build internal agents. They weren't interested in partnering but mentioned that they see value in the OS repo and would like to use it. I had some other deals I was working on and felt Delve probably wasn't going to convert, so I didn't really pay much attention. I spoke with Sazzad a few times about using Sim and different pieces of the platform, but I didn't realize they were going to sell it out of the box as a standalone solution. I figured they might use it for automating workflows in the background.

As you can see from the thread, they weren’t interested in partnering with us as it didn’t have “high enough ROI rn”. Karun ended up not responding to me.

Ultimately, it’s open source so there’s nothing we can really do about it. That’s just part of having software available to everyone for free. I’m friends with Arda and Sazzad so I wish them all the best, but yeah, we didn’t know about ‘Pathways’ until your article.

Best,

Emir Karabeg
Co-Founder and CEO
Sim (sim.ai)

---

Wow. To steal a product from a fellow YC company and then tell them you’re not interested in doing a deal with them because the ROI isn’t there, while you are making hundreds of thousands and have millions in pipeline from a ripped off product… that takes massive balls.

Eng team estimates 4-6 weeks of effort to fully integrate
- Karun Kaushik, while already using and selling it.

I am doing my very best to stay objective and level-headed, but this actually made me shake out of anger. Literally.

The whistleblower enters the room

Delve sells to SimStudio

On Thursday, April 24, 2025 at 10:28, Karun had a sales call with Emir Karabeg, one of the Founders and the CEO of SimStudio (now Sim).

In that call, Karun promised he would personally get them onboarded. He promised them they wouldn’t have the difficulties they had with other platforms. He promised them the best customer service possible, and personal attention. Karun even threw in a pair of Arcteryx jackets and a box of donuts.

Here is a snippet from the AI notetaker’s call notes:

# Notes

# Delve + Sim Studio compliance
**Date**: Thursday, April 24, 2025 at 10:28 PM  
**Duration**: 27:05  
**People**: Selin Kocalar, Karun Kaushik, and Emir Karabeg

#### Action Items
- [ ] Karun Kaushik - **Send DocuSign for compliance services agreement**
Send the DocuSign contract to Emir for the $15,000 SOC 2 Type 1, Type 2, and HIPAA compliance services package.
- [ ] Karun Kaushik - **Conduct onboarding call at 4:30 PM**
Personally onboard Emir and his team, walking them through the Delve UI and getting them started with compliance services.

#### Overview
* SimStudio and Delve agreed on a **$15,000** package for SOC 2 Type 1, Type 2, and HIPAA compliance to support SimStudio's enterprise customer needs
* Karun explained SOC 2 Type 1 is a point-in-time assessment while Type 2 requires a **3-month** observation period
* Emir confirmed SimStudio needs compliance quickly for Mobile Health Consumer, which serves **5 million** employees
* Delve will personally onboard SimStudio on **April 24, 2025** at **4:30 PM**
* SimStudio will receive two branded Arcturix jackets and a box of donuts as part of the YC deal

[...]

### Closed Won Reason
- Superior customer service compared to previous provider
- Comprehensive end-to-end solution including audit management
- Faster implementation timeline (10-15 hours estimated)
- Personalized support from US-based team

---

Karun starts stealing (mid-call)

They got Karun’s personal attention alright.

From the timestamps it seems that Karun posted about Sim Studio while he was on the sales call with them:

From Delve’s Linear we can see that first mention of Sim Studio as part of the Pathways project happened in April 2025.

DMs between members of Delve that I cannot share indicate that it was around then that active usage and development of Sim started, which was before Delve’s series A happened.

I wonder if they disclosed using Sim without license during due diligence.. I know! They did not.

There is a saved Notion page in the Whistleblower dump (no timestamp) that contains the following:

Sim Studio Port Plan

We need the following folders ported for the front-end:

• Blocks

• Entire components:

• Subblocks

• Serializer

Backend required functionality:

• Executor (entire folder)

• Probably not loops for now.

• Tools

• Handlers

• Lib

• Db —> Get some influence for it for our tables

The code doesn’t lie

Outsourced maintenance

They don’t even maintain it themselves. They outsource development to a cheap dev shop in Bangladesh:

Who are they even selling this to?

Delve was in the process of selling Pathways to tens of companies, many of which are well known enterprises. Contract sizes would range from $20k to $200k+.

Here are a few examples:

Notion

Notion is an actual customer of Delve’s Pathways, but the only proof I have is from a DM that I can’t share. It was a $50k+ deal.

Brex

Anthropic

Gusto

This is beyond unethical

Let all this sink in for a moment.

The Sim Studio guys paid $15k for (fake) compliance. Then Delve uses and commercially sells their IP without attribution (theft). The Sim team keeps engaging, but Karun says the ROI isn’t there, so no deal.

Then Delve proceeds to sell $50k-$100k+ deals to enterprises using a product they didn’t even build themselves.

You want to endorse that type of behavior Garry Tan? Jared Friedman?

This is just another episode in a long string of behaviors endorsed by YC.

And I’m not expecting anything from Insight Partners either. Due diligence is a joke to them and they will just let Delve do whatever the hell they want. Hell, if Delve lies and steals enough they might even get a juicy series B from Insight.

Tune in next time

Part 3/5 will be published coming Wednesday.

Parts 4 or 5 will contain quite the nuclear bomb, but I don’t want to rush writing it up. So I’m going to take a few days for that one. I’ll drop a timeline in the next article.

If you thought this was bad, you’re in for a treat the coming days.

DeepDelver