Lawsuit alleges Offerpal co-founder was cheated out of ownership ...

by Dean Takahashi

Offerpal Media founder Anu Shukla was hit with a lawsuit this summer over alleged shenanigans over the company’s founding, VentureBeat has learned.

In August, Kevin Halpern filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Shukla. He alleges that he helped start the company in 2006 with Shukla but was cut out of promised stock ownership after a third founder, Michael Liu, joined the startup, according to the suit filed in Superior Court in Alameda County.

Offerpal declined comment. The lawsuit does not name Offerpal itself. Shukla declined to comment, and Halpern’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Shukla has been in the limelight this week because of a public battle with Techcrunch editor Michael Arrington over the ethics of offers , which are special ad deals that users of social games can accept in lieu of paying for items in a game. She also stepped down as CEO yesterday as the company hired George Garrick to replace her . In an interview, she said she will remain at the company.

This lawsuit is another headache that will keep the company in the limelight. In Silicon Valley, where the stakes in founding startups are so high, such disputes among founders are common. Facebook recently settled a founder dispute over the beginnings of the company and restored the name of Eduardo Saverin as a co-founder of the company — presumably along with a large settlement fee.

Shukla has said that the idea for Offerpal arose after she signed up for an Amazon.com credit card in exchange for an offer for $30 off her Amazon purchases. But in the lawsuit, Halpern paints the company’s beginnings differently. He says that Shukla and he formed a close professional relationship between 2003 and 2006. She even invited him to her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Shukla, who had founded Rubric, contacted Halpern in April, 2006, to tell him she was moving on from her latest startup, mybuys.com. She wanted to start a social network and wanted to know from Halpern what the latest trends among youths were.

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