Gurbaksh Chahal flew high and fell fast

The character, who shares a very similar name with one from “50 Shades of Grey,” has his own LinkedIn page featuring a head shot of Josh Dallas, an actor who appears on the ABC fairy-tale drama “Once Upon a Time.”

Chahal would email marketing professionals as Gray, and when he hooked a potential customer, the CEO would berate the staff for being outdone by a fake salesman, said the people, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution.

While still on probation from his domestic-violence conviction, Chahal kicked another girlfriend in late 2014 and threatened to report her to immigration services, according to a police report that surfaced last year.

While there wasn’t enough evidence to file criminal charges in that incident, it led to a judge revoking his probation last month, prompting Chahal to hand over the CEO role to his sister, Kamal Kaur.

Chahal’s self-destruction — and the former colleagues, shareholders, customers and women left in the rubble — is an extreme case, but it demonstrates a more common risk in Silicon Valley of entrepreneurs who amass too much power.

The company wanted to let customers create campaigns and distribute them seamlessly to social networks, email and smartphones.

Last year, Gravity4 was hit by two civil lawsuits from former employees, with allegations including gender discrimination, harassment and wrongful termination.

In a response, the company said a former employee was trying to publicize negative claims to get money he wasn’t owed, and that the suit violated a nondisclosure agreement.

Gravity4 kept the acquisition spree going, buying struggling ad-tech startups that could be picked up on the cheap, primarily in stock transactions, people familiar with the situation said.

Chahal also made multiple bids of as much as $350 million to buy Rocket Fuel Inc., a publicly traded automated advertising company.

Monte Zweben, Rocket Fuel’s interim CEO at the time, described the offer in a September news release and letter to Chahal as “not credible.”

Chahal, who began walking around the office periodically in a black T-shirt with gold letters that read BOSS, chewed out employees for not hitting results and complained about spending $1 million of his own money each month to keep the company running, said people familiar with the events.

The Gravity4 holiday party, where employees from recently acquired companies gathered in the top-floor office to meet their new CEO, turned out to be an album release party, said people familiar with the event.

Under pressure after his second alleged domestic assault, Chahal used ad credits from the company’s Facebook account this year to promote a page he created on the social network calling San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón a racist, two people familiar with the situation said.

Some employees who were promised company shares never received stock certificates, said three people familiar with the situation.