That really wasn't the ending I was hoping for here. It almost looks like the legal system is made specifically to benefit these kind of trolls. They can drag cases with no merit over years, leaving you with lawyer fees etc. during that period.
Don't work with assholes
31–40 of 75 posts
Re: Don't work with assholes
#32> Guess who has a strong interest in the holding company? He does! Here we have a broker, purportedly acting for the seller in a transaction, who also benefits from a holding company as a buyer. I'm not a lawyer, but if that's not a conflict I don't know what is. What government authority regulates this kind of broker (e.g., is there a fiduciary responsbility?), and investigates conflicts of interest like the one all…
No idea. These regulations and barriers can be bypassed if enough value can be extracted despite laws to the contrary.
Re: Don't work with assholes
#33Any way to proof that the author actually sold his company by a better price than initially said? Otherwise it's just a bad sci-fi.
What I learned from this story? You're always the bad guy in someone's story. Specially if this someone has a blog, time to blog and get linked to HN.
Re: Don't work with assholes
#34> With a young family and a new life beginning, I did not want to ruin the limited time I have on this earth with my loved ones being a dad whose head is somewhere else, rather than enjoying these moments together. This a*hole wasn't worth it. I paid him off to leave us alone. While understandable from his POV, I'm disappointed to see the guy getting paid for services not rendered, and so reinforcing his tactics.
As an ex-lawyer I'd say this was 100% a good decision. As a profession we make our living off people who say "Dammit I won't pay, it's the principle, it's wrong & immoral." I, and I suspect many other lawyers, would always reply that principles cost a fortune in money time and grey hairs. I had plenty of clients and didn't need to litigate for billable hours.
... if you live/do business in the US. Over the decades, I had quite a lot of this situations in parts of our company or the company as a whole; here you cannot get anything done in this case (most cases didn't go to court as they were too silly, the ones that did we won and we didn't even turn up; just our lawyer while the opposition sat there wasting their time). If you get it to court at all (which is a problem to begin with), it will go no-where and 'the broker' will just lose money and time.
A system where you have to pay bullies because it's cheaper and easier than defending yourself is broken.
Re: Don't work with assholes
#35> With a young family and a new life beginning, I did not want to ruin the limited time I have on this earth with my loved ones being a dad whose head is somewhere else, rather than enjoying these moments together. This a*hole wasn't worth it. I paid him off to leave us alone. While understandable from his POV, I'm disappointed to see the guy getting paid for services not rendered, and so reinforcing his tactics.
I'm not only disappointed with what the author did, but also I am surprised that he chose to negotiate again with the asshole, who had proven to have no interest in reaching a win-win deal. If I were him, I would have spared an amount of money to be used for legal costs and fee, in case the asshole were awarded. I still would have the peace of mind.
Re: Don't work with assholes
#36" In spite of my intuition telling me not to."
Always go with your intuition
"There was a lot of work to do to get the materials together for him. I invested months of time in a back-and-forth with him, with me compiling and developing this information."
ROTFL. Old story. You have an seriously interested buyer? Charge a non-reimbursable upfront payment that will be credited towards the deal, should there be one. This will compensate for the amount of time you have to invest. The buyer bulks. Why? Walk away.
His advices 1 to 3 are excellent. I give you a few more for free
a) It is never too early to walk away from something bad
b) Do you know what is the death of every business deal? Lengthy negotiations
c) If someone uses a word, an expression, a sentence that sounds odd to you. Something that you would not use in this context. Never ever let this slide as a hick up, mistake, or whatever. Always make sure to ask what exactly he means by this. E.g. talking about license deals when talking about a VC investment (don't ask, please don't ask for the story).
Re: Don't work with assholes
#37> With a young family and a new life beginning, I did not want to ruin the limited time I have on this earth with my loved ones being a dad whose head is somewhere else, rather than enjoying these moments together. This a*hole wasn't worth it. I paid him off to leave us alone. While understandable from his POV, I'm disappointed to see the guy getting paid for services not rendered, and so reinforcing his tactics.
As an ex-lawyer I'd say this was 100% a good decision. As a profession we make our living off people who say "Dammit I won't pay, it's the principle, it's wrong & immoral." I, and I suspect many other lawyers, would always reply that principles cost a fortune in money time and grey hairs. I had plenty of clients and didn't need to litigate for billable hours.
If you have a case that’s very likely to win, the broker would know that too. Would they want to pay legal fees to chase a fee they are likely not going to get? I think it was a bad decision to pay.
Re: Don't work with assholes
#38Any way to proof that the author actually sold his company by a better price than initially said? Otherwise it's just a bad sci-fi. What I learned from this story? You're always the bad guy in someone's story. Specially if this someone has a blog, time to blog and get linked to HN.
I think you just outed yourself.
Re: Don't work with assholes
#39> Peace and love to everyone out there. Including the broker.
The writer warned a lot of founders/owners of a problem they might encounter, in many M&A proceedings, which is great.
Also, maybe they wanted to get it off their chest. And getting blog content out of a bad experience is a silver lining.
But I'm skeptical of "love" for the broker. Especially if people who wanted to know who that broker is could figure it out. Then broker might be more likely to call it "libel" than "love".
My current thinking is that sometimes you should dance around some of the details of warnings that come from experience. Vague but honest phrases like "I've heard of" and "I've seen in the field" can help. As can being informed and motivated by first-hand experience, but using second-hand public examples from other instances of the problem, when communicating about the general problem.
Re: Don't work with assholes
#40This also applies in non-business contexts. If you have a nice open source project, minecraft server, web forum, whatever: get rid of the assholes. Even if they are a highly capable person, in the end it's not worth it. They'll turn off other valuable community members, cause drama, and shift the general atmosphere to the worse.
And how do we find out who is the asshole? All people that i heard saying this were convinced its not themselves.