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Comment by hoodoof | Hacker News Reader

Why? Im merely pointing out how the law works, and that if you want to win a legal dispute, do it when the opposing party has incentive (or better, a requirement) to quickly resolve the issue.

Not sure why pointing this out makes me not a good person to found a company with.

I have separated from a co-founder and I made damn sure we had an agreement in writing defining the terms of the separation. Didn't take much, no lawyers, just a one page agreement, three people each with a copy, all with signatures. All still good friends.

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Because you're waiting to maximize your leverage and make a play for yourself. That's a bad quality in a teammate.

To you and everyone else attacking him, you're conflating his explanation with his personal character. That's not fair.

Tell that to Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins.

So is cutting someone out of a company. My point is that this probably became an emotional issue. If that's the case, it's not hard to see how someone would wait for an opportune moment to assert ownership.

But, since we don't really know all the facts, if this was a mutual parting of ways, then I agree that it's a terrible thing to do.

The bottom line is we really don't know what happened. I can at least see how a reasonable person could walk this path if they feel they've been maligned.

I think you can fire people without it making you a bad founder. At least, I hope so.

And I think you can demand the compensation you believe is legally due without being considered a greedy selfish asshole.

How is that not greedy and selfish?

...Because you have an agreement with someone that you were a 50/50 co-founder, and that agreement is on paper? Sorry, are you privy to some kind of proof that invalidates Guillory's central evidentiary claim -- in the same way that Zuckerburg and Facebook were able to show that Paul Ceglia fabricated a contract -- or are you just arguing from circular reasoning that Guillory is a greedy asshole and thus his claims that he was unjustly forced out must, QED, be false?

I think the claim is that demanding what is rightfully yours is greedy and selfish. I don't know whether I agree in this case (probably not), but there have been cases in my life where I do agree.

That is correct.

It's that "rightfully yours" bit that really bothers me. Where does that come from and why is it so obviously rightfully yours? It takes some gumption to assume you're in the right. This land is rightfully mine because I bought it from someone else who genocided a people, but okay great, it's rightfully mine, I feel super great about it.

Legal documents are part of a negotiation, not a casual conversation. If one side says they owe you nothing, you come in saying they owe you everything. You meet in the middle.

Same as with patents and everything else.

The one's filing them and demanding what's rightfully theirs are selfish, the one's not filing patents are less selfish.

Assuming Jeremy's story is true, then by the time he exercised that strategy he'd already by forced out by his co-founder and was no longer a "teammate".

I don't think it's fair to judge the ethics of a person by how nicely they respond to being screwed over.

That's not how I want the law to work. We should strive for better

It indicates your attitude towards how one should act.

Obviously, one should act in their own self interest and use the law to it's fullest extent, not consider the social consequences of being a dick.

Good luck sir.

Being aware of risk angles and protecting yourself is not the same thing as condoning exploitative behavior.

I'd want my cofounder to think through how somebody with legal leverage over our company would act. You should want that too.

> I don't think so, it's the right way to play it. Wait until you have maximium leverage and then play your legal cards.

That sounds like condoning exploitative behaviour to me. Is that the sentence we are both talking about?

Which side is being more dickish in this case is still very much in dispute, which is why it's going to court.

You seem to be certain one side is looking out for their self interest much more than the other, which you have no way of really knowing because you are just another person commenting on a discussion on the Internet.

Unless you are personally involved in this matter, and know more than what has been publicly reported so far? And even then, how would we know you are not being biased in your judgments by your involvement?

The amounts of money involved make everyone involved pretty greedy, I don't understand why that's so controversial.

Ya'alls notion of "rights" is pretty disturbing to me.

So you are against anyone being compensated at the amounts under discussion?

Which is a coherent, defensible position. Sounded like you were selectively accusing one actor in this dispute as the "greedy" one, which I think is why you got so much push back on your comments.

Not against anything, just think it's fair to label those seeking large amounts of money as dick'ish and greedy.

If money is your goal great, more power to ya, but I'm gonna call you a dick and not want to work with you.

So you're implying that you'd never work with YC or Vogt or any of their investors? GM is spending $1B to acquire Cruise, which is a vast sum for a small company that has been around for 3 years. Even 20% of that would be a great payout for all involved, and think of how much money GM could have left over to continue to revive the dormant U.S. industry, and U.S. fortunes at large. By your standards, if YC and Vogt were ethical actors, they'd ask GM to reduce the offer, because building things and innovating is itself an honest reward.

> By your standards, if YC and Vogt were ethical actors, they'd ask GM to reduce the offer, because building things and innovating is itself an honest reward.

What do you need a reward for at all?

Why are you trying to build something?

By my standards, your motivation matters a lot, it sounds like you think people deserve rewards for doing things, I don't think that makes very much sense. Gold star you did the right thing, bullshit.

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