An events company whose associates helped stage the January 6, 2021, rally has signed contracts worth over $26 million with the United States government, according to documents reviewed by WIRED. Since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Event Strategies, a Virginia-based firm with deep ties to Trumpworld, has negotiated a contract with the General Services Administration that could be worth up to $100 million over the next 15 years.
It’s a remarkable rise for the 26-year-old firm, which until the recent windfall had received what appeared to be around $50,000 in government contracts over the past decade. It also appears that Event Strategies won these new contracts with very little competition. According to HigherGov, a tool used by contractors to track federal and state contracts, Event Strategies was the only company to bid on eight of the 11 contracts tracked by the site.
Many of the recent contracts are related to America 250, an 18-month-long commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
In early 2025, the US Semiquincentennial Commission, a bipartisan group established in 2016 to coordinate the celebrations, cut ties with Precision Strategies, an event planning group founded by Obama-era staffers. Soon after, the commission hired Event Strategies to replace them.
Contracts reviewed by WIRED in the System for Award Management database show that by September 2025, the company had signed its first contract related to the celebrations: a $5 million contract for work related to Titans of the Sea, an event designed to celebrate the Navy’s 250th anniversary. Weeks later, the company signed another contract for a $2.1 million deal for “AMERICA 250 – EVENTS.”
More recently, Event Strategies signed a contract valued at $333,084 with the General Services Administration at the beginning of February for “FREEDOM 250 DESIGN AND CONTENT SUPPORT SERVICES.” Freedom 250 is, according to the White House, a “public-private partnership” related to America 250.
The tenor of the America 250 celebrations have already proven controversial. Over the last few months, large banners ostensibly tied to the project were seen hanging from federal buildings all over Washington, DC. One banner, which was hung outside the Department of Justice, features the tagline: “Make America Safe Again” alongside a massive image of Trump’s face. The DOJ said the banner was hung to “celebrate 250 years of our great country.” To many, the tagline was an indication that the Justice Department has failed to maintain its independence during Trump’s second term. California governor Gavin Newsom said the banner was “beyond parody,” writing on Facebook: “How many dictatorship-style monuments, building name changes, and fake awards do Americans have to endure?”
In early March, banners featuring Charlie Kirk, Booker T. Washington, and Catharine Beecher were hung outside the Department of Education near Capitol Hill, alongside two large banners featuring the America 250 logo. Critics were alarmed to see Kirk’s likeness on the banner, as the deceased Turning Point USA cofounder and conservative commentator had previously called to “abolish” the Department of Education and was known for numerous racist and homophobic comments.
WIRED could not confirm whether these specific banners, or the banners hanging at the DOJ, were designed and implemented by Event Strategies. The DOJ and the Education Department did not respond to a request for comment about the company responsible for the banners.
“There is a proper federal competitive bidding process, and the White House expects all agencies to comply with it,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle tells WIRED. When asked for further comment about Event Strategies, Ingle referred WIRED to the General Service Administration. GSA did not respond to a request for comment.
The Contracts
When Trump lost the 2020 election, Event Strategies was on hand: Cofounder Tim Unes was listed as a stage manager for the January 6 rally at the Ellipse in 2021, according to the paperwork submitted to secure a permit. Megan Powers Small, who is now the chief of staff at Event Strategies, was tagged on rally permit paperwork as the event’s “Operations Manager for Scheduling and Guidance.” Justin Caporale was listed as a project manager of the event. Though Caporale was later described as the Event Strategies CEO and the company’s managing partner, he had previously worked as director of operations for Melania Trump in 2018 and on the Trump campaign in 2020.
While out of office, Trump continued working with Event Strategies. The company produced many of Trump’s campaign rallies during the 2024 presidential campaign; filings from that year show Event Strategies received $31 million from the Trump 47 Committee PAC over a seven-month period. Caporale’s Instagram account also shows him associating with Trump and administration officials, including at some of those same rallies.
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![Mercor’s Brendan Foody calls out Sequoia over ‘dual-pricing’ valuation tricks | TechCrunch
In recent days, founders and founders-turned-investors took to X to share horror stories about being mistreated by VCs. Their complaints ranged from VCs falling asleep during pitch meetings to investors suggesting a founder fire a co-founder.
Brendan Foody, co-founder of the AI talent platform Mercor, which was last valued at billion, went so far as to call out Sequoia, arguably one of the most elite VC firms in the world.
“The “sequoia scam” is worse than a single horror story,” Foody wrote on X. “in the last 6 [months] ive seen a half dozen rounds where sequoia invests in 2 tranches. everyone pretends they only did the higher valuation. founders misrepresent this to their employees & then shop it to angels too.”
TechCrunch has previously reported on VCs investing in the same round at different valuations. Under this mechanism, the lead VC firm invests a significant chunk of its capital at a lower, preferential valuation, while putting a much smaller portion of capital in at a drastically higher price. The massive “headline” valuation that gets announced manufactures the perception of a dominant market winner, masking the fact that the lead investor’s actual average entry price was significantly lower.
The disparity can be stark. For example, when the AI-driven IT helpdesk startup Serval announced a million Series B at a billion valuation, the announcement didn’t tell the whole story. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sequoia’s actual lowest entry point valued the company at just 0 million — less than half the headline figure. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between perception and reality that Foody is pointing at.
Serval isn’t alone. At Aaru, a startup that uses AI to simulate user behavior for market research, lead investor Redpoint backed the company at a 0 million valuation despite an announced billion headline price.
Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire pushed back on Foody’s characterization directly. “TBH I have seen some of this behavior but I think it’s unfair to call it the ‘Sequoia scam,’” Maguire wrote in response to Foody on X. “This has happened approximately five times during my seven years at Sequoia. What happens is other investors are willing to pay a high price for a hot company — usually AI — at multiples above what we’re willing to pay. So we try to decouple the company-building relationship with our partner from the capital, and this leads to two tranches at different valuations in close succession.
“I’m not aware of anything shady here,” Maguire continued, “but if you’ve seen it I’d love to know. VC is a repeated game, so it just doesn’t make sense for us to try to mislead people. And if anyone has, I’d love to know. And in general, congrats on the success of Mercor — it was a miss for us.”
Maguire’s response frames the practice as a market reality rather than a deliberate maneuver — Sequoia, he suggests, is simply unwilling to pay what competitors will pay for the hottest deals, so it structures its participation differently. Whether that explanation fully holds up depends on a question Maguire doesn’t address: what founders are telling the people who don’t already know about the lower tranche.
Although Sequoia appears to use this pricing mechanism most frequently, Foody acknowledged it isn’t the only firm using this tactic. And while the dual-pricing structures certainly inflate a startup’s perceived worth and help attract top talent, calling the practice a “scam” may be going too far.
That’s because employee stock options should theoretically be priced based on the blended value of all tranches — not the headline number — according to Jason Woo, partner in valuation and financial modeling at Armanino, whose firm provides the independent 409A appraisals startups use to set option prices. A 409A is supposed to reflect a company’s fair market value, giving employees a strike price that’s insulated from whatever valuation gets announced in a press release.
There’s a catch: 409A valuations are widely understood to skew low. Because a lower strike price means a smaller tax bill for the company, there is a structural incentive to keep that number down. The appraisal that’s supposed to protect employees from an inflated headline valuation is also, by design, not trying particularly hard to reach the top of the range.
The angel question is more complicated. Unlike employees, angels are writing checks, not receiving options. There is no independent appraiser standing between an angel investor and whatever number a founder chooses to share.
The dual-pricing structure is just one of way VCs and founders game the perception of success in a hyper-competitive market. Another, more pervasive tactic involves manipulating or outright overstating annual recurring revenue (ARR).
The VC Niko Bonatsos, a longtime veteran of General Catalyst who more recently founded Verdict Capital, addressed this issue during one of TechCrunch’s events in Athens last month. “We [at Verdict] mostly invest before metrics, before product, before the company [has fully taken shape] but I do have a past portfolio, and sometimes the conversations are telling. I’ll get a call or an email with a very high ARR number. I’ll think: I didn’t remember that company doing so well. So I reach out to the founder: ‘What happened? Why are the numbers so strong?’ And the answer is: ‘Oh yeah, it’s 365 times the revenue we made yesterday because one of our campaigns hit.’ So yeah, some of these terms have lost meaning.”
Foody declined to comment further. Sequoia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
— With additional reporting from Connie Loizos
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Mercors #Brendan #Foody #calls #Sequoia #dualpricing #valuation #tricks #TechCrunchMercor,Sequoia Partners,Valuations](https://i2.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/GettyImages-1258486979.jpg?w=1024&ssl=1 "Mercor’s Brendan Foody calls out Sequoia over ‘dual-pricing’ valuation tricks | TechCrunch
In recent days, founders and founders-turned-investors took to X to share horror stories about being mistreated by VCs. Their complaints ranged from VCs falling asleep during pitch meetings to investors suggesting a founder fire a co-founder.
Brendan Foody, co-founder of the AI talent platform Mercor, which was last valued at billion, went so far as to call out Sequoia, arguably one of the most elite VC firms in the world.
“The “sequoia scam” is worse than a single horror story,” Foody wrote on X. “in the last 6 [months] ive seen a half dozen rounds where sequoia invests in 2 tranches. everyone pretends they only did the higher valuation. founders misrepresent this to their employees & then shop it to angels too.”
TechCrunch has previously reported on VCs investing in the same round at different valuations. Under this mechanism, the lead VC firm invests a significant chunk of its capital at a lower, preferential valuation, while putting a much smaller portion of capital in at a drastically higher price. The massive “headline” valuation that gets announced manufactures the perception of a dominant market winner, masking the fact that the lead investor’s actual average entry price was significantly lower.
The disparity can be stark. For example, when the AI-driven IT helpdesk startup Serval announced a million Series B at a billion valuation, the announcement didn’t tell the whole story. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sequoia’s actual lowest entry point valued the company at just 0 million — less than half the headline figure. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between perception and reality that Foody is pointing at.
Serval isn’t alone. At Aaru, a startup that uses AI to simulate user behavior for market research, lead investor Redpoint backed the company at a 0 million valuation despite an announced billion headline price.
Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire pushed back on Foody’s characterization directly. “TBH I have seen some of this behavior but I think it’s unfair to call it the ‘Sequoia scam,’” Maguire wrote in response to Foody on X. “This has happened approximately five times during my seven years at Sequoia. What happens is other investors are willing to pay a high price for a hot company — usually AI — at multiples above what we’re willing to pay. So we try to decouple the company-building relationship with our partner from the capital, and this leads to two tranches at different valuations in close succession.
“I’m not aware of anything shady here,” Maguire continued, “but if you’ve seen it I’d love to know. VC is a repeated game, so it just doesn’t make sense for us to try to mislead people. And if anyone has, I’d love to know. And in general, congrats on the success of Mercor — it was a miss for us.”
Maguire’s response frames the practice as a market reality rather than a deliberate maneuver — Sequoia, he suggests, is simply unwilling to pay what competitors will pay for the hottest deals, so it structures its participation differently. Whether that explanation fully holds up depends on a question Maguire doesn’t address: what founders are telling the people who don’t already know about the lower tranche.
Although Sequoia appears to use this pricing mechanism most frequently, Foody acknowledged it isn’t the only firm using this tactic. And while the dual-pricing structures certainly inflate a startup’s perceived worth and help attract top talent, calling the practice a “scam” may be going too far.
That’s because employee stock options should theoretically be priced based on the blended value of all tranches — not the headline number — according to Jason Woo, partner in valuation and financial modeling at Armanino, whose firm provides the independent 409A appraisals startups use to set option prices. A 409A is supposed to reflect a company’s fair market value, giving employees a strike price that’s insulated from whatever valuation gets announced in a press release.
There’s a catch: 409A valuations are widely understood to skew low. Because a lower strike price means a smaller tax bill for the company, there is a structural incentive to keep that number down. The appraisal that’s supposed to protect employees from an inflated headline valuation is also, by design, not trying particularly hard to reach the top of the range.
The angel question is more complicated. Unlike employees, angels are writing checks, not receiving options. There is no independent appraiser standing between an angel investor and whatever number a founder chooses to share.
The dual-pricing structure is just one of way VCs and founders game the perception of success in a hyper-competitive market. Another, more pervasive tactic involves manipulating or outright overstating annual recurring revenue (ARR).
The VC Niko Bonatsos, a longtime veteran of General Catalyst who more recently founded Verdict Capital, addressed this issue during one of TechCrunch’s events in Athens last month. “We [at Verdict] mostly invest before metrics, before product, before the company [has fully taken shape] but I do have a past portfolio, and sometimes the conversations are telling. I’ll get a call or an email with a very high ARR number. I’ll think: I didn’t remember that company doing so well. So I reach out to the founder: ‘What happened? Why are the numbers so strong?’ And the answer is: ‘Oh yeah, it’s 365 times the revenue we made yesterday because one of our campaigns hit.’ So yeah, some of these terms have lost meaning.”
Foody declined to comment further. Sequoia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
— With additional reporting from Connie Loizos
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Mercors #Brendan #Foody #calls #Sequoia #dualpricing #valuation #tricks #TechCrunchMercor,Sequoia Partners,Valuations")
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