81–90 of 453 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you talking about? I was the founder/CEO.
Your original comment doesn’t make that very clear at all; you might want to clarify who “they” are in your comment.
CEO would disappear for months at a time, with the promise of returning with capital. We never really knew where he went, and he wouldn’t let anyone else talk to investors (including me, who was CTO). Eventually he stopped paying us, but promised that the money was just tied up in the parent company set up in the caymans. After 2 months of not paying myself or any other employees, the COO and I drainked the remainder…
Oh come on, you can’t leave us hanging like that! This is the beginning of the best story in the thread. How did the cartel connection form? Was your contact named Estefan? Did he have a mild accent and project an aura of power?
“Bad decisions make good stories!”
CEO would disappear for months at a time, with the promise of returning with capital. We never really knew where he went, and he wouldn’t let anyone else talk to investors (including me, who was CTO). Eventually he stopped paying us, but promised that the money was just tied up in the parent company set up in the caymans. After 2 months of not paying myself or any other employees, the COO and I drainked the remainder…
After that company died I joined a real robotics startup with some seriously talented founders. They had already built out several robots and had the core skills (mechanical engineering, software engineering, electrical eng, and controls) to design and build a working robot. More importantly though they knew the process to make a robot real which involves personal contacts at custom component suppliers, the right outfit to do engineering review, how to raise enough money to get the kind of runway hardware needs. And on and on.
Moral of the story, you can't fake hardware. Get experienced people on board from day one or your going to flounder and most likely die.
a. could not build a good team,
b. co-founder was not 100% committed,
c. picked target market in the geography which I was new to. Although it was my home country, the way to do business and lack of professional network became hindrance.
I chased and successfully won a huge customer for my small and fledgling startup. I chased and successfully won a sole service contract for a key part of their business process. I allowed a credit situation with them to grow over the course of 3 months while I allowed them to have 60 day terms. And then, they went out of business and left me holding the bag with $150,000 in unpaid AR after I spent $90,000 generating…
I'm curious, how much would you have paid to be protected from this kind of risk and make sure you'd get your money?
And because you sell your invoices, the factor now takes the payment default risk.
Does cost a penny though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why shouldn't a startup fuck with the cartels?
Fucking with cartels is expensive and stressful. Armored cars and armed security are nice and all, but being in a situation that necessitates riding in an armored car and armed security detail is not really fun.
I chased and successfully won a huge customer for my small and fledgling startup. I chased and successfully won a sole service contract for a key part of their business process. I allowed a credit situation with them to grow over the course of 3 months while I allowed them to have 60 day terms. And then, they went out of business and left me holding the bag with $150,000 in unpaid AR after I spent $90,000 generating…
I know for most that's obvious for most but apparently not me. :Randy's law 248: At the heart of most successful businesses is an irrational consumer.
He had a pretty big savings account and came from a well-off family, so he agreed to front me basically just enough to cover my rent while I worked on the app. We agreed that since he wasn't really contributing much as far as manpower or hours logged, he could help justify his stake in the ownership by contributing monetarily.
After a couple of more months, we had a working, functioning app that was about 80% finished, but we started to butt heads on some ideas and he claimed he was frustrated by the fact that the app wasn't completely finished (even though we had changed scope and redesigned the entire app no less than three times).
He used this as an excuse to renege on our initial 50/50 split idea. Instead of honoring our deal, he opted to claim complete ownership and write me out of the picture.
Another way someone could look at it: He saw the app was starting to come along and was getting actual beta users, and he got $dollar$ signs in his eyes and decided to be greedy.
Both he and I were young and naive at the time, and the whole project had essentially been built on a handshake deal, because we didn't want to spend 10 grand on lawyers and paperwork before we even had a product worth anything.
I had spent a year working on an app, barely making ends meet and living off of credit cards, but because I was trusting and naive, he was basically able to screw me over and walk away with everything. His name was on more of the paperwork and he was the primary signer on the bank account. I could have fought it, but at that point I didn't have the energy or the desire to even work with him any more.
The joke is on him, though. Without me around to actually write the code, he never did manage to finish the last 20% of the app, and here we are almost 10 years later. After all that, he never managed to get the app out of beta, and he never made a penny off it.
The end lesson I learned: Don't invest time and energy in an idea or a partnership if you aren't willing to spend the money up front to lock down the legal aspect, because by the time you have enough traction and money to lock it down, it will be too late!
Money and greed corrupts people. Period. When someone has the possibility of millions of dollars suddenly seem like a real possibility to them, you might be surprised by just how quickly they turn on you!