2 ms·

I'm surprised you could trust them on the rev share when they were so far behind on contracted payments.

by tdeck 2y ago

comrade1234 2y ago
You can get the P&L statement every year that they prepare for their taxes. Eventually I stopped asking for it because the payments were always correct. But also, they are trustworthy people and fell behind to a big one-time corporate expense that I understood.
- close04 2y ago
  You were lucky that you ran into the ideal case at every step (quality of people, trustworthiness, company performance, etc.), except for the initial invoice hiccup. Your experience is the very rare exception. After being in your position repeatedly I learned that most cases are not this. Clients would just refuse to pay with reasoning that was sometimes legally solid even if clearly malicious. I ended up having to go to court again and again to get the invoices paid, which meant getting paid years late and with a haircut from unrecoverable court fees. Sometimes it wasn't even worth it to go to court just for a pyrrhic victory, or there was nothing left to go after. I'm scratching my head now to remember a single case where the inability to pay was due to genuine impossibility followed by good will, rather than "because we can". They'd go to extreme lengths to not pay their debts, all the way to bankruptcy and usually reappearing a day later with a new name and a clean sheet.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    > all the way to bankruptcy and usually reappearing a day later with a new name and a clean sheet. "Phoenix" bankruptcies are a real problem among small businesses. It defrauds their creditors, and sometimes the public (taxman) as well. All the way up to things like Rangers (Sevco) football club. The excellent book on the history of fraud, Lying for Money, has a chapter on this. It concludes that almost every middle class person could probably get away with a fake business bankruptcy at least once, because it's difficult to tell from the outside versus a real (extremely common) small business failure.
creer 2y ago
These discussions happen because it becomes unlikely that the payments will ever happen. It's about finding another way. After that, you can build in ways to verify - at least until you can trust again. Like access the accounting.
pastage 2y ago
Common thing in bad relations is ignoring the situation of your debtors or creditors. It is always a business deal so the last thing you want to bring is hurt feelings. My second development deal was a 75k debt that fell through. It was a good business and a good developer they just did not have their expectations set correctly.

I'm surprised you could trust them on the rev share when they were so far behind on contracted payments.

by tdeck 2y ago

I'm surprised you could trust them on the rev share when they were so far behind on contracted payments.

You can get the P&L statement every year that they prepare for their taxes. Eventually I stopped asking for it because the payments were always correct. But also, they are trustworthy people and fell behind to a big one-time corporate expense that I understood.

close04 2y ago
You were lucky that you ran into the ideal case at every step (quality of people, trustworthiness, company performance, etc.), except for the initial invoice hiccup. Your experience is the very rare exception. After being in your position repeatedly I learned that most cases are not this. Clients would just refuse to pay with reasoning that was sometimes legally solid even if clearly malicious. I ended up having to go to court again and again to get the invoices paid, which meant getting paid years late and with a haircut from unrecoverable court fees. Sometimes it wasn't even worth it to go to court just for a pyrrhic victory, or there was nothing left to go after. I'm scratching my head now to remember a single case where the inability to pay was due to genuine impossibility followed by good will, rather than "because we can". They'd go to extreme lengths to not pay their debts, all the way to bankruptcy and usually reappearing a day later with a new name and a clean sheet.
- pjc50 2y ago
  > all the way to bankruptcy and usually reappearing a day later with a new name and a clean sheet. "Phoenix" bankruptcies are a real problem among small businesses. It defrauds their creditors, and sometimes the public (taxman) as well. All the way up to things like Rangers (Sevco) football club. The excellent book on the history of fraud, Lying for Money, has a chapter on this. It concludes that almost every middle class person could probably get away with a fake business bankruptcy at least once, because it's difficult to tell from the outside versus a real (extremely common) small business failure.

creer 2y ago

These discussions happen because it becomes unlikely that the payments will ever happen. It's about finding another way. After that, you can build in ways to verify - at least until you can trust again. Like access the accounting.

pastage 2y ago

Common thing in bad relations is ignoring the situation of your debtors or creditors. It is always a business deal so the last thing you want to bring is hurt feelings. My second development deal was a 75k debt that fell through. It was a good business and a good developer they just did not have their expectations set correctly.