4 ms·

Someone with 500k and a few employed certainly has money. This story was sheer luck and is only showing off that.

by pearjuice 13y ago

benihana 13y ago
I don't think you fully appreciate how expensive it is to go to court.
- EarthLaunch 13y ago
  He knows more about court expenses, than you know about what he knows. Just say "It's expensive to go to court", or better, just don't comment.
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    Completely off-topic, but your comment made me wonder: Is there any way to formalize expressions like "he knows more about X than you know about Y", where X and Y are different domains? Is there a way to quantify it, to answer questions like "how much more"? Do we have any kind of well-defined "unit of knowledge"? Does anyone here knows of relevant math branch that talks about these questions?
    - StevenXC 13y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_(mathematics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_(mathematics) A measure is a function on the subsets of a space which yields a non-negative real number. For example, a measure of the triangle with vertices (0,0), (2,0), and (6,0), is 6, the area of that triangle. Measure satisfies certain nice properties, such as if A is a subset of B, then the measure of A is no more than the measure of B. So, I guess if you can define a reasonable measure on the spaces X and Y, you can measure collections of X and collections of Y, and use the real numbers to determine which is "more". But this doesn't strike me as useful in any way other than the fun of abstract mathematics. :-)
  - smalltalk 13y ago
    No, if he knew anything at all about legal expenses, he wouldn't have implied it made sense to sue someone with maybe $500,000 in assets.
- slantyyz 13y ago
  A big part of the game is played before the matter is even played out in the court system. This part is much less expensive. It's one thing to be threatened with a lawsuit, but it's another matter once the paperwork is filed. When I was hit with a revenge suit during the first bubble, the single, asset-free me had a different reaction than some of my peers who had families and much more to lose. There's a lot of psychological warfare going on. When a process server shows up at your doorstep and serves papers to your spouse at your partially-paid-for house, things take a turn. Any sense of righteous defiance you might have starts to waver at this point. The plaintiff in my situation got a lot for the 20-30K they probably spent on suing us. Without going to court, they shut down an entire company and made over a half-dozen people unemployed -- edit: while making them pay for their own legal fees too --. And they got the satisfaction of a "moral" victory for chump change. Never mind that most of their claims were bunk. So, in a nutshell, it's not always about going to court.
niuzeta 13y ago
> "I'm not sure what the lesson is here." At least the author's frank about it.
fr0sty 13y ago
According to the linked story at the time he said "so sue me" he had made ~$32k gross revenue and had no employees. He made his $400k and hired the employee much later.
- ufmace 13y ago
  He never actually said "so sue me", though. He was told, probably correctly, that at his size, there's no point in getting a perfect contract that precisely covers what happens in every one in a million possibility to the satisfaction of every party. Ignore the rare possibilities of the contract and just do the work, knowing that if you hit one of those rare possibilities and violate it, then their only real recourse is to sue you, which probably costs more than it's worth. It's about being aware that you can say "so sue me" instead of worrying about covering every risk in the contract.
  - comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
    Right. An honest, competent, and communicative contractor will not prompt a revenge lawsuit, because even if things go wrong, they will not blow up into 100k+ problems without the client knowing the risks of continuing down that road. Unless you cause an egregious 50k+ of damage, suing is probably idiotic. And how can that even happen? The client would/should refuse to make the last payment if the work sucks. ("So sue me" works in both directions.) So it has to be a nearly complete fail for suing to make much sense. It could be possible to run across a very incompetent executive who is desperate for a scapegoat...but that is probably rare. Such a suit is unlikely to see the inside of a courtroom, because it is a delaying tactic of an executive whose career is probably already circling the drain.
shin_lao 13y ago
500 k is nothing for a Fortune 500 company. When they work with a small company they know it might be write off (ie the small company cannot deliver and the money spent is wasted). So they won't sue but they have internal processes that say everybody must sign "The Contract".
pjbrunet 13y ago
I disagree he got lucky. "Pud" is brilliant. Isn't this the guy that created TinyLetter, Adbrite, F-company? This stuff is legendary.

Someone with 500k and a few employed certainly has money. This story was sheer luck and is only showing off that.

benihana 13y ago

I don't think you fully appreciate how expensive it is to go to court.

EarthLaunch 13y ago
He knows more about court expenses, than you know about what he knows. Just say "It's expensive to go to court", or better, just don't comment.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  Completely off-topic, but your comment made me wonder: Is there any way to formalize expressions like "he knows more about X than you know about Y", where X and Y are different domains? Is there a way to quantify it, to answer questions like "how much more"? Do we have any kind of well-defined "unit of knowledge"? Does anyone here knows of relevant math branch that talks about these questions?
  - StevenXC 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_(mathematics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_(mathematics) A measure is a function on the subsets of a space which yields a non-negative real number. For example, a measure of the triangle with vertices (0,0), (2,0), and (6,0), is 6, the area of that triangle. Measure satisfies certain nice properties, such as if A is a subset of B, then the measure of A is no more than the measure of B. So, I guess if you can define a reasonable measure on the spaces X and Y, you can measure collections of X and collections of Y, and use the real numbers to determine which is "more". But this doesn't strike me as useful in any way other than the fun of abstract mathematics. :-)
- smalltalk 13y ago
  No, if he knew anything at all about legal expenses, he wouldn't have implied it made sense to sue someone with maybe $500,000 in assets.
slantyyz 13y ago
A big part of the game is played before the matter is even played out in the court system. This part is much less expensive. It's one thing to be threatened with a lawsuit, but it's another matter once the paperwork is filed. When I was hit with a revenge suit during the first bubble, the single, asset-free me had a different reaction than some of my peers who had families and much more to lose. There's a lot of psychological warfare going on. When a process server shows up at your doorstep and serves papers to your spouse at your partially-paid-for house, things take a turn. Any sense of righteous defiance you might have starts to waver at this point. The plaintiff in my situation got a lot for the 20-30K they probably spent on suing us. Without going to court, they shut down an entire company and made over a half-dozen people unemployed -- edit: while making them pay for their own legal fees too --. And they got the satisfaction of a "moral" victory for chump change. Never mind that most of their claims were bunk. So, in a nutshell, it's not always about going to court.

niuzeta 13y ago

> "I'm not sure what the lesson is here." At least the author's frank about it.

fr0sty 13y ago

According to the linked story at the time he said "so sue me" he had made ~$32k gross revenue and had no employees. He made his $400k and hired the employee much later.

ufmace 13y ago
He never actually said "so sue me", though. He was told, probably correctly, that at his size, there's no point in getting a perfect contract that precisely covers what happens in every one in a million possibility to the satisfaction of every party. Ignore the rare possibilities of the contract and just do the work, knowing that if you hit one of those rare possibilities and violate it, then their only real recourse is to sue you, which probably costs more than it's worth. It's about being aware that you can say "so sue me" instead of worrying about covering every risk in the contract.
- comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
  Right. An honest, competent, and communicative contractor will not prompt a revenge lawsuit, because even if things go wrong, they will not blow up into 100k+ problems without the client knowing the risks of continuing down that road. Unless you cause an egregious 50k+ of damage, suing is probably idiotic. And how can that even happen? The client would/should refuse to make the last payment if the work sucks. ("So sue me" works in both directions.) So it has to be a nearly complete fail for suing to make much sense. It could be possible to run across a very incompetent executive who is desperate for a scapegoat...but that is probably rare. Such a suit is unlikely to see the inside of a courtroom, because it is a delaying tactic of an executive whose career is probably already circling the drain.

shin_lao 13y ago

500 k is nothing for a Fortune 500 company. When they work with a small company they know it might be write off (ie the small company cannot deliver and the money spent is wasted). So they won't sue but they have internal processes that say everybody must sign "The Contract".

pjbrunet 13y ago

I disagree he got lucky. "Pud" is brilliant. Isn't this the guy that created TinyLetter, Adbrite, F-company? This stuff is legendary.