Hi, John. I'm not the poster, but the way I look at it, everybody has to learn caution sometime. If this guy's lesson costs him just $2k and a little headache, I'd say he got away cheap.
I can think of a number of important business lessons I learned that cost me more time or money. E.g., "be careful picking business partners", "don't start work without a signed contract", or "crazy clients don't get saner". All things I should have known, or could have discovered reading. But had I waited until I had read and appreciated all business lessons, I never would have started anything.
And I appreciate him sharing the lesson with Hacker News. It reminds me of the Despair, Inc poster on mistakes:
Hey William, you're on point. This has definitely taught me a bitter lesson. I hope others who are working on similar projects learn from my mistake. As I mention before, today payment processing API's make it so easy to launch a ecommerce service that we forget about other factors. That's pretty much what happened to me.
Always good to hear good calm advice from somebody I know and respect, Will. I admit I make tons of mistakes (and also would never start anything if I always "thought it through"). But I still really don't like what the original poster presented.
Hi OP here, thank you for your opinions. I just wanted to say that I thought that I had "thought it through" but apparently I didn't, it was more complicated than I thought it was. This is not the first time in my life that I thought I had thought something through, there have been numerous times actually in all aspects of my life. A year or so ago, I watched a Malcolm Gladwell talk on TED (http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce) where spaghetti sauce companies thought they had thought things through, but really didn't it. Of course I could have spend lots of time reading books, but even then I might have missed this. I just wanted to share my experience and ask for any advice (not legal) just advice/tips in general from others who had been in the same boat. So far the comments have been excellent and invaluable. They have taught me many things I didn't think of before, but more importantly it will help others who might be looking or are doing that same thing I was doing already on my side project.
Comments
Hi, John. I'm not the poster, but the way I look at it, everybody has to learn caution sometime. If this guy's lesson costs him just $2k and a little headache, I'd say he got away cheap.
I can think of a number of important business lessons I learned that cost me more time or money. E.g., "be careful picking business partners", "don't start work without a signed contract", or "crazy clients don't get saner". All things I should have known, or could have discovered reading. But had I waited until I had read and appreciated all business lessons, I never would have started anything.
And I appreciate him sharing the lesson with Hacker News. It reminds me of the Despair, Inc poster on mistakes:
http://www.despair.com/mistakes.html
"It could be the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others."
So thanks, eam, for getting a bunch of young entrepreneurs to say, "Hey, maybe I should double-check our fraud prevention."
Hey William, you're on point. This has definitely taught me a bitter lesson. I hope others who are working on similar projects learn from my mistake. As I mention before, today payment processing API's make it so easy to launch a ecommerce service that we forget about other factors. That's pretty much what happened to me.
Always good to hear good calm advice from somebody I know and respect, Will. I admit I make tons of mistakes (and also would never start anything if I always "thought it through"). But I still really don't like what the original poster presented.
Hi OP here, thank you for your opinions. I just wanted to say that I thought that I had "thought it through" but apparently I didn't, it was more complicated than I thought it was. This is not the first time in my life that I thought I had thought something through, there have been numerous times actually in all aspects of my life. A year or so ago, I watched a Malcolm Gladwell talk on TED (http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce) where spaghetti sauce companies thought they had thought things through, but really didn't it. Of course I could have spend lots of time reading books, but even then I might have missed this. I just wanted to share my experience and ask for any advice (not legal) just advice/tips in general from others who had been in the same boat. So far the comments have been excellent and invaluable. They have taught me many things I didn't think of before, but more importantly it will help others who might be looking or are doing that same thing I was doing already on my side project.