> The cofounders didn’t have access to the code repo
Get the fuck outta here. I couldn't read past that. I'm done. Thanks for the writeup. Godspeed.
The side hustle from hell
81–90 of 146 posts
Re: The side hustle from hell
#82This article reminded me of the time a guy wanted to pitch his startup idea for me to develop. He wanted me to sign an NDA before telling me, as the idea was so great that I would obviously steal it, which I refused.
So all he would tell me is that it was “the next Twitter”, and from what I could gather, he would retain the majority of the equity and I would do all of the work, while he lobbed ideas at me from on high.
I passed on it, but only because the red flags were extremely obvious. I could certainly see a situation where I might have been sucked into something more subtly exploitative.
Re: The side hustle from hell
#83Having non-technical founders who failed to even outsource their project is an enormous red flag. Nobody there knew how to make the product a reality and if it is you who is doing 100% of the work, then you obviously deserve 100% of the equity. "Having an idea" is not worth equity. If you thought the idea was great, there was an obvious golden opportunity for you, none of the people there are going to make this into…
I certainly should have spotted this as soon as they offered me a contract that was a clumsily-reworded version of the contract for the awful overseas contractors
Re: The side hustle from hell
#84So an app that would probably serve a real need fails because the team is unable to bootstrap the two-sided market. The best dev moves to a bullshit "green habits" app that doesn't suffer from such problems because... it doesn't really do much in the first place. Not the greatest outcome for the world.
Hey man, don't knock 2020/2021 ZIRP era projects
Don't you remember before inflation when we were able to focus on climate change!
But you totally got us there, the startup failed because we were a vitamin (and because our on-the-fence seed round was scuppered by Putin cooling some feet)
Re: The side hustle from hell
#85Lovely article. The payoff of "I loved every minute of it" after all the agony and missed red flags really hit home.
Thank you for reading :)
Re: The side hustle from hell
#86> The cofounders didn’t have access to the code repo Get the fuck outta here. I couldn't read past that. I'm done. Thanks for the writeup. Godspeed.
"This is just object code for my idea why would I want to read it"
Re: The side hustle from hell
#87Rather than being a cautionary tale, I actually think this is the kind of misadventure that everybody should have. You learn so much about the real world from a failed startup where nothing is done right (at least I did). Your early 20s are the perfect time to do it with little risk. Lots of painful memories I laugh at later. Highly recommended.
Re: The side hustle from hell
#88Very surprising that well-designed contracts (with well-designed exit clauses among other issues) aren't at the top of the 'ten red flags' list. This isn't just a problem with tech startups - business partners down the ages have been burning each other with flimsy contractual agreements and 'trust me buddy' rationales when questioned about the contracts. This is one of the best use cases for LLMs by the way - they ca…
> This is one of the best use cases for LLMs by the way - they can often explain contracts to you, or find flaws in contracts. I respectfully disagree. Just hire a lawyer. You don’t want your understanding of your contract colored by the opinions of an LLM. The lawyer carries liability insurance if he gives you bad advice. If you don’t have a few hundred dollars to spend on independent legal advice, you might want to…
Interestingly Ben Mezrich (author of The Social Network) said the Facebook partner who got hit by the stock-split clause terms had hired a team of lawyers - but he claimed they were really working for the Zuckerberg side, possibly in-house lawyers.
There might be great value in LLMs fine-tuned to deal with contractual law, regulatory law, and legislative interpretative dance. At present I'd be sure to run the legal contract through multiple different LLMS at the very least, and analyzing it paragraph by paragraph in debate club manner (LLM A: tell me why this is a good contract, LLM B: tell me why this is a bad contract, LLM C: analyze the flaws in the arguments of LLM A and LLM B, etc.) Doesn't replace a good contract law specialist human, certainly, but at least you can then talk to your lawyer in a semi-informed manner.
LLMs are like compilers in that unqualified faith in their initial output is never a good idea.
Re: The side hustle from hell
#89The first red flag is a startup that is contingent on a two sided marketplace... damn that's a tough place to be!
Re: The side hustle from hell
#90Liked this: "Startup pitch competitions are mostly a waste of time—validation comes from talking to users and iterating, not from impressing a judge."