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Fucking Sue Me (2011)

pud.com

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Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#21

Post by jesusthatsgreat »

this is an attitude that you need to earn, not the kind of attitude that you should start out with...

the reality is bad things happen sooner or later and this attitude banks entirely on linear growth. the bigger you are the harder you fall, so if you're hiring employees without knowing whether you can afford them or not, then that's just wreckless and shouldn't be praised or encouraged.

it's almost an 'all or nothing' approach where you reinvest everything you earn indefinitely because you want the snowball to keep growing. sooner or later, the snowball will start melting or you'll have to push it uphill and this philosophy will have to be 'put right' by sensible people who only spend what they know they can afford.

it's a bit like playing the lottery and the guy that wins is giving advice to those who want to win - "play every week, buy as much as you can, that was my secret"... yeah, well that will work for some people, but for most people it won't work.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#22

Post by raheemm »

My risk-averse nature has been the #1 challenge in my startup life of the last 11 months.

I was worried about taking on a partner for 3 months. Finally I just decided to skip that - it meant I'll grow slower.

I was worried about sending sales and marketing emails for 4 months. Finally, I decided to announce my beta launch and offer discounts for anyone who signs up. One customer signed up and paid for a year's subscription.

Because I had a customer, it forced me to stop dreaming about the perfect product launch and just do my beta launch. Which happened 3 weeks ago.

Now I worry about losing that one customer because my beta product is not perfect. Im also struggling with getting more customers. Why? Because I want to create the most perfect email marketing funnel. I've been procrastinating on this for a month now.

If I worried a lot less, things would happen so much faster.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#23

Post by snorkel »

It is a truth of business that contracts are mostly for defining expectations and escape routes, but as long as the client is satisfied none of those clauses will be enacted, especially because most businesses have more important things to do then go to court.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#24

Post by lamby »

petercooper wrote: post #8

I've been trying to find a post by either Derek Sivers or Tim Ferriss along these lines. It was about basically ignoring annoying rules and regulations if the potential penalty was either small or unlikely to be incurred. Anyone remember it?

It's certainly in the 4HWW book. Probably in the context of ignoring emails.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#25

Post by jonmrodriguez »

jonnathanson wrote: post #10

"I'm not sure what the lesson is here." I'm not sure, and furthermore, I'm not sure I agree with being overly 'fuck-it' about legal matters. But I can tell you what it's like having been where you were with the "endless lawyering," and why it sucked so badly. I worked for a startup once in which our CEO was a really smart guy, but the kind of smart guy that got overly worked up over tiny details and edge cases. We'd…

Jesus Christ, $50k to pick the company name?? You could launch a whole new product for that much.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#26

Post by brazzy »

oskarth wrote: post #13
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is from 1998 (written up in 2011), and was written by pud of f*ckedcompany fame, I think. He probably doesn't read hackernews.

He very much does. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pud (last comment was a month ago).

So he very much does, but doesn't very much?

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#27

Post by brazzy »

ojbyrne wrote: post #11
JonFish85 wrote: post #3

As much as I admire the candor & spirit of this, at the same time, I'd hate to have the chance of being completely destroyed by the lawyers. Dodged a bullet in this case, but to me, the downside is not even close to worth the upside. $400k contract, but if things go horribly awry, their lawyers are coming after you for millions, and drag you through the mud. Not worth it, in my opinion.

But from the other side, the perspective is probably: - legal fees are going to be in the $100k's - he clearly has little money, so even if we win, we'll end up garnishing his wages for 40 years to get a fraction of what we sued for. - we might not win, then we're further in the hole So take the loss and move on. Thus from pud's side it's not an insane risk, but a calculated one.

That assumes the other side is rational and motivated only by profit. Which is not always a given (or possible to tell in advance).

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#28

Post by StavrosK »

jonmrodriguez wrote: post #25
jonnathanson wrote: post #10

"I'm not sure what the lesson is here." I'm not sure, and furthermore, I'm not sure I agree with being overly 'fuck-it' about legal matters. But I can tell you what it's like having been where you were with the "endless lawyering," and why it sucked so badly. I worked for a startup once in which our CEO was a really smart guy, but the kind of smart guy that got overly worked up over tiny details and edge cases. We'd…

Jesus Christ, $50k to pick the company name?? You could launch a whole new product for that much.

Sure, but what will you call it?

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#29

Post by joezydeco »

JonFish85 wrote: post #3

As much as I admire the candor & spirit of this, at the same time, I'd hate to have the chance of being completely destroyed by the lawyers. Dodged a bullet in this case, but to me, the downside is not even close to worth the upside. $400k contract, but if things go horribly awry, their lawyers are coming after you for millions, and drag you through the mud. Not worth it, in my opinion.

I interpreted Pud's dad like this:

"Fucking sue me" == "I'm 22, have no assets to speak of, and you're going to try and collect millions on me? Good luck."

In Pud's particular case, it's easier to say this. If you're an established firm with hundreds of employees and millions in cashflow, not so much.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#30

Post by StavrosK »

raheemm wrote: post #22

My risk-averse nature has been the #1 challenge in my startup life of the last 11 months. I was worried about taking on a partner for 3 months. Finally I just decided to skip that - it meant I'll grow slower. I was worried about sending sales and marketing emails for 4 months. Finally, I decided to announce my beta launch and offer discounts for anyone who signs up. One customer signed up and paid for a year's subscr…

That's not risk aversion, risk aversion is picking the safe way/minimizing risk. What you're doing is actually increasing risk because you're too afraid to handle things. There's no upside to that.
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