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Comment by DanielN | Hacker News Reader

So I had a similar idea about six months ago. Briefly start working on the app when I was informed by a lawyer friend of mine that most states had laws against advertising drink specials.

Interested if you have looked in to this at all, especially because googling "laws against advertising drink specials" brings up this http://www.wtop.com/41/2821800/Vas-happy-hour-law-makes-some... as the first result.

On a broader scale I guess this brings up two points: 1) have the owners of this site considered this issue yet? 2) Is it sometimes better to just build it and worry about the legal ramifications later (to a point)?

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I'm a just a dev on the site, but here's my point of view. The news has overblown the actual laws concerning the marketing of drink specials. We have actually been in touch with the Virginia ABC since the start to make sure nobody gets in trouble as a result of this site. The laws are in place because Virginia is afraid of underage drinking, and they believe that drink specials encourage underage kids to drink (of course, they wouldn't be able to get into the bars, but that doesn't seem to concern the legislature). As long as the drink specials are advertised in a responsible manner, the state doesn't seem to have a problem with it. Luckily, being developed in VA means that if it works with the laws here, it will likely work with the laws pretty much everywhere else.

Maybe this is hopelessly naïve, but I almost feel like having to navigate through sticky legal restrictions offers some advantages to a startup. For one, it's a barrier to entry for competitors. But even more, it forces you to be creative with monetization, and lets you tackle some interesting problems others may have decided to skip.

That's one way to look at it - like many of the risk factors we struggle against (market, product, incumbent), if it can be overcome it can be a definite barrier to competition.

On the flip side, it's still a risk.

We've considered this issue and done a lot of research on it, there's really only 12 states to worry about, and even those the problems can be overcome. It's never a good idea to see barriers and say "nope, too hard". Figure out a solution, there is one, it's the Hacker Way.

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