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YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

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Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#71

Post by damoncali »

tptacek wrote: post #37

I don't understand what happened here. The CEO told him to submit his invoice to legal@. Did he do that? What did their legal say? Did the company formally decline to pay the invoice? Or did he just assume he wasn't going to get paid and jump the gun? But anyways: LESSON LEARNED for startup CEOs. Here it is, it's very simple: If you want to question or slowroll an invoice, direct it to finance@, not legal@. You have…

I think the legal@ was meant to be equivalent to fuckoff@. That was my reading, at least.

Lesson: Get paid first when working with new clients. There just is no other way.

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#73

Post by Silhouette »

alttab wrote: post #28
kika wrote: post #9

I don't understand this, people. They're YC funded, in the worst case they have how much now, 10k? Risk your reputation for a few hundred dollars, having a few thousand in the pocket, why?

They didn't sign anything, and the "CEO" of any YC startup early enough to need to outsource product development isn't promising anything despite their words.

the "CEO" of any YC startup early enough to need to outsource product development isn't promising anything despite their words.

Well... Yes. Yes, they are.

There is no probation period when you start a business and become a legal officer of a company. If you want to be a CEO, you'd better act like it from 9am on day 1, because chances are you have the power to commit your business to any obligation it can legally undertake. Once you do, your business will be on the hook for any such commitments you make, forever. And depending on where you are, you might get away with failing to honour a commitment if you made an honest mistake and the business failed, but if you were just blatantly negligent about your responsibility to run the company properly then your corporate legal shield might not be as solid as you'd like either, leaving you on the hook personally as well.

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#74

Post by kika »

kika wrote: post #59
alttab wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't sign anything, and the "CEO" of any YC startup early enough to need to outsource product development isn't promising anything despite their words.

I outsource my startup development heavily and I didn't bother signing anything either. Yes, I've lost a few hundred (probably even a couple of thousand) this way, paying for the job that went directly to the dumpster. It's a cost of doing business. And I didn't raise money this time, this is all my consulting revenue, I could have paid an income tax on it and put it in my pocket. But if you want to build a beautiful…

BTW, I'm looking for a designer. Contacts open.

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#75

Post by jarrett »

Cushman wrote: post #35

How much does it really matter in these situations whether or not you have a "signed contract"? My understanding is that any agreement to do work for compensation is a contract, and these days even a "signed" contract is likely to just be a PDF which is as easily faked as an emailed "$65/hr? Sounds good, go ahead and get started." Is it just one of those things where someone's less likely to try to rip you off if the…

Here's one reason why putting it in writing is best, even if forgery is possible.

People are way more likely to argue about what was agreed to, than about whether an agreement was made.

With verbal agreements, most people won't lie and say that no conversation took place. (The "whether" part.) But many people will misremember or distort the exact words that were exchanged. (The "what" part.) And those exact words are what count, legally.

Likewise, a person would have to be really slimy to claim that your signed, written contract is a forgery. Most people won't dispute that they signed it. (Again, the "whether" part.) And since it's in writing, and there simply is no room for disputing the "what."

To put it another way, getting a written agreement raises the moral and legal stakes for a potential welcher. They'd have to accuse you of forgery, instead of just shrugging and saying "I guess we remember the conversation differently."

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#76

Post by [deleted] »

Cushman wrote: post #35

How much does it really matter in these situations whether or not you have a "signed contract"? My understanding is that any agreement to do work for compensation is a contract, and these days even a "signed" contract is likely to just be a PDF which is as easily faked as an emailed "$65/hr? Sounds good, go ahead and get started." Is it just one of those things where someone's less likely to try to rip you off if the…

[deleted]

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#77

Post by brudgers »

To the CEO if the report is substantially accurate:

The cost of attorneys and more importantly the distraction isn't worth the worst case invoice for three days work. It's not going to cost you your shirt, just one sleeve. Be glad it's a cheap lesson.

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#78

Post by zemaj »

kategleason wrote: post #68
kennywinker wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. 5 hours @ somewhere between $67-20/hour* is $337-$100. Since the post doesn't mention a specific amount, we have no way of knowing if their bill was for more or less... all we can guess is it was > $100 (three $'s used when blanking the price). * http://www.howdesign.com/design-business/pricing/hourly-rate...

$780.

That seems pretty reasonable to me for a professional freelance design from scratch like that. I normally expect individual pages to cost in the range of $1k from scratch.

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#79

Post by damoncali »

_delirium wrote: post #19

I'm going to go out on a limb and register a slight discomfort with the increasing use of HN as a "court of public opinion" in very fact-bound disputes like this one. I can sort of see resorting to it out of desperation, but I'm afraid the Internet Lynch Mob has a very high ratio of outrage to effort spent actually investigating. This post has 84 upvotes in 21 minutes, which suggests a very quick investigation! So, t…

On the other hand, this is a vibrant case study for both inexperienced founders and freelancers about the importance of doing the boring shit right. Sign a contract. Set a price. Get paid. Make sure there is a meeting of the minds, as the lawyers like to say.

This, right here, is exactly why we do these things.

Re: YC S12 company refuses to pay for my design. "Send your claim to our legal team"

#80

Post by jcc80 »

faramarz wrote: post #22

Not handled professionally on the designers part. He could have turned this into a win by being their go-to-guy for future contract work or getting referrals to other YC residents instead. I don't think it was worth resorting to public shaming for a few grand. I guess Eligible got some free press out of this now. Well done!

Why would someone want to be the "go-to-guy" for a client that's refusing to pay an invoice of $780? I can understand the referrals just because it's YC. But, in general, I doubt designers go around asking clients that refuse to pay for referrals.
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