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> So it sounds like they had an initial agreement for 6000 units, but the actual purchase orders were coming in piecemeal.

What difference does that make? They thought they had a deal to sell 6000 "units" for $250,000. If they had just bothered to divide 250 by 6 they would have immediately realized that a unit could not possibly be a bag, and they would, by their own account, have passed on the deal, and none of this would have happened.

You are making the assumption that there's some formal deal for $250k total. I don't think that was ever the case. My guess is that in these negotiations, you tell the buyer that you sell in packs of 6 for say $41/case. They run their numbers and come back to you saying "okay, we have all the info we need and we are going to take 6000 units and the formal POs will come over the next few weeks."

> You are making the assumption that there's some formal deal for $250k total.

No, I'm not. I'm not assuming anything. Here is what they wrote:

"In April 2022, a representative from this distributor reached out to us to see if we would be interested in participating in an online specialty coffee program for a major nationwide retailer. The opening order would be approximately 6,000 “units”."

At this point there are only two possibilities.

1. They asked how much they were going to be paid for these 6000 "units" and on what terms.

2. They didn't.

If they asked, the answer should have immediately clued them in that they were making a false assumption that a unit was a bag. And if they didn't, well, that's still on them.

You are assuming they knew the $250k amount at that point. When they made the deal for 6000 units, they didn't know the total was going to be $250k. They didn't know the total was $250k until they learned it was for 6000 cases later.

They must have had at least some discussion on price per unit. Maybe not about the total, but how was this not caught when they sent the first invoice? At six bags per case, either they sent 1/6 of the ordered amount of coffee, or they got paid 1/6 of the expected money.

This smells like a slimy growth hacking strategy.

> You are assuming they knew the $250k amount at that point.

No, I'm saying they should have asked.

You're moving your goalpost. Up above you said,

> They thought they had a deal to sell 6000 "units" for $250,000.

Now you're agreeing that they didn't necessarily have that deal up front, and that they should have asked for it.

Are you saying they agreed to a deal without even knowing the price of a ‘unit’?? They truly are idiots then

Others have pointed this out, but it's possible that the estimated volume was quoted in units while the price was quoted in bags. That seems unlikely, but it's possible. If that is what happened, then their IQ (idiocy quotient) is not quite so far off the scale as it would have been if they really had agreed to the deal without knowing the price at all. But it's still pretty damn high.

And under no conceivable scenario are the justified in accusing the distributor of being a bad actor.

But even then the price wouldn’t make sense right? I mean - regardless of unit confusion, didn’t they have to at some point calculate a price per unit themselves ? At that point the error would be pretty clear no? I can’t think of a combination of unit confusion that results in a normal price

> But even then the price wouldn’t make sense right?

Yes, it would, if the price was quoted per bag rather than per unit/case. That seems unlikely, but it's possible, and it would make the initial confusion slightly more understandable.

Yes, that's what I thought at the time. But then I re-read the article and realized that it was intentionally misleading. It is now clear to me that not only are they idiots, they are also dishonest. The summary of the situation, in their words, is:

"TLDR: We got grifted by a multi-billion dollar distributor for $250,000."

That is a lie.

What actually happened is that a broker came to them with an offer which they accepted despite not achieving clarity on exactly what the offer actually was. They thought they were signing up for 6000 bags when in fact they were signing up for six times as many because they did not understand a term of art in their industry. This was their first mistake. Then, when they realized their mistake, they decided to proceed and invest the necessary capital to meet the order without fully assessing the potential risks. That was their second mistake. They could have pulled the plug then, but they chose not to.

Then it all fell through. That's tough, I feel sorry for them, but they are not the victims here. Deals falling through is a Thing That Happens in business. That's why there are contracts and insurance, and why finance and risk management is a thing. At every step in the process, their situation was 100% their fault. No one lied to them. No one put a gun to their head and forced them to do something they didn't want to do. No one did anything that was not part of standard business practice. The situation is entirely the result of their naivete, failure to do their due diligence, failure to properly assess risks, and unbelievably poor decision making in the face of newly discovered information.

And now they are digging themselves in even deeper by accusing their distributor of grifting them. No, sorry, they were not grifted. They were just stupid, and rather than admit it and learn from it, they are trying to shift the blame to their distributor and make this sound like a David-v-Goliath story. It isn't. It's a company-being-stupid-failing-to-own-up-to-it story.

Who cares, didn’t they know how much they’d be paid per ‘unit’?? If they didn’t ask even that they are idiots - that’s the core part of the deal, 1 unit or 6,000

No, but they were 100% given a price for the 6000 units. Nobody is shipping 6000 units to anyone unless they know and like the amount they are being paid.

Why would you go into debt for $216k, if you didn't know you were going to make at least that much back?

From the article, they said they knew that $250k was coming so it would be worth it.

This is a major error on their part, to think they had really found somebody willing to pay $41/bag.

Even if they spent $216k to make $250k it had to occur to them that it wasn't really worth it. They talked about them working 3 shifts, 12-16 hours every day for 6 weeks, bringing in extra people to help out to get them over the hump. They did all this so they could have future orders like this from this buyer. All for $34k after expenses.

All that effort to get them over the hump and they're basically making $10hr at best. Future orders like this wouldn't be sustainable because you can't pay labor that little. They seem like a lifestyle business that got in over their head.

Even so, you told them you sell in packs of 6. That’s a unit then. I sympathize with the producers but this really seems like their error.

Did they name the distributor? If not, your take on this is compelling. Unless these guys dropped out of middle school to do the startup thing, in which case we now have a good answer for kids in school who ask "But when will I ever need to use this math stuff?" To defend against "grifters", of course.

The person's point, I think, is that even if you incorrectly believe a "unit" to be a bag of coffee, and you're purchasing 6k units (bags) for $250k, you're then, in your mind, being charged $41/bag of coffee. That price is far too high, higher than retail: i.e., you'd be selling at a loss, or at a price point that the market wouldn't take. So if you believe a "unit" is a bag of coffee, you're not making that purchase¹, as the price is too high.

The "orders kept coming", as I understood the article, because, again, they were expecting 6,000 bags, not 6,000 cases. So by the 1,001th case arrives, you're raising eyebrows, as you're now getting more than you though you ordered. A few over is perhaps whatever, but they were going to get 5,000 cases more than expected — quite a bit more than a few over.

¹… if you've done the math. But I've seen deals in my own field done where I know very little math got done, so … I can kind of see this mistake being made.

Because they didn't know the total was going to be $250k until they learned it was for 6000 cases.

The point is at some did they not discuss “we will sell you a unit for $x?”

If not, why not?

So they were just shipping goods without discussing price at all?

> Reminds me of my friend who got a lucrative job offer from a large investment bank out of college, but wanted to adjust the terms in the non-compete section of their contract [...]

Maybe such requests wouldn't work in consulting/IB/law where it seems like starting comp is very regimented ("our first year asssociates all get $X unless our competitor across town raises their offer to all their first years") or in the case of juniors, where firms aren't expecting much from a 22 year old fresh college grad beyond learn to do things the way we want and grind, but I think there's still value in bringing up such matters even if they are non-negotiable.

"We can't change the contract? Darn, I really care about IP assignment clauses!" gives you some plausible ammo for asking for higher comp without just transparently saying "give me more money because you have it and I want it," plus you're subtly implying you are someone who produces IP that has value, not like all those other programmers who didn't ask.

I've never gotten a company to change their IP assignment clause for me, FWIW, but I have had success getting other exceptions.

I’m not totally disagreeing with this advice but it’s just not applicable everywhere. When you are an investment banking analyst coming out of college you don’t have any ability to negotiate salary or pretty much anything.

The "big company scams small family coffee roasters" narrative is way easier to sell then the "we made a big oopsie" one though.

> but wanted to adjust the terms in the non-compete section of their contract (something you hear suggested a lot by people here on HN).

You probably hear this a lot on HN because:

- In the US, programmer contracts are often negotiable, within reasonable limits.

- Default programmer contracts are often shockingly bad for the employee. And no competent lawyer would ever advise you to sign some of the ones I've seen.

I've successfully negotiated almost every contract I've signed since I was an intern, and I've been doing this for over two decades.

In my experience, very few employers have ever read their contracts. Several years ago, when I renegotiated a contract, the leadership team said, "Wow, that really is ridiculous and unfair," and actually wound up fixing their standard contract.

I had several f'ed up contracts in the 90s-2000s, and tried to negotiate each of them. In a fairly good position several times, as they had forgotten to have me sign the specific contract (non-compete, outside of CA) when they hired me.

I got fuck all, as well. In 2 of 3 cases I think it was the VC who set the contract terms - I assume it was easier to lose 10% of their engineering team than to renegotiate, and I wasn't willing to play chicken and see if they fired me.

> I wasn't willing to play chicken and see if they fired me.

That makes negotiation harder.

There a number of books from the Harvard Negotiation Project which offer roughly the following advice:

- Make sure your plan B is good enough that walking is no big deal.

- Focus on finding a fair solution, even if you need to keep pulling the discussion back to that ideal.

Basically, 75% of your negotiation effort should be spent improving your plan B.

You want to be mostly saying things like, "I would love to work for you, but a 5 year world-wide, industry-wide non-compete is simply not fair. I knew a guy who basically got locked into indentured servitude when a private equity firm abused a similar clause. I'll tell you what. You have employees in California, right? California law strikes a pretty fair balance on this issue. What contract language do you use there?"

And if they say, "No, I don't think we can do that," you say, "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that! I was looking forward to solving your challenges with _____, but it sounds like we can't find mutually agreeable terms. No harm, no foul. I wish you the best of luck." Then you walk out the door and make the phone call to move ahead with plan B or C.