> My advice? Don't pull this kind of stunt again. If you really must, [do it the longer, proper way and run out of time].
In my opinion, if this isn't the advice you receive in response to everything you do as a startup, you aren't hustling enough.
In my opinion, if this isn't the advice you receive in response to everything you do as a startup, you aren't hustling enough.
Laws, in the end, are just legal levers people can use--if they feel impinged-upon, and see no more personal recourse--to seek justice. At scale, you don't have personal relationships with your customers, so you have to obey every letter of every law. Before then, though--when you're small, and when you know each customer well-enough that you could call them friends--those customers have other ways to seek justice for things you do to them. Like, say, complaining to you.
This case is very similar to another I remember reading about on HN: an "extremely exclusive restaurant" in New York, which is not only invitation-only, but whose location is a well-protected secret. Why is it a secret? Because the "location" is an apartment! No restaurant license; just a "retired" five-star chef, cooking for you out of his own house. Completely illegal--all sorts of regulations are being broken--but much-beloved by all involved.
This is the kind of thing you can do when you have personal relationships with your customers. This is what you do that gets customers to love you--and can bootstrap into a big, legitimate business if you want. This is what people mean by "hustling", but everyone is afraid to say. It's going out on a real limb--not just sacrificing your own financial nest-egg, but giving your customers the ability to blackmail you or put you in jail if they decide they really don't like you. But this is what makes magic happen.
(Note that I'm totally not advocating the other kind of "hustling", the one done by grey-hat SEO "growth hackers." If you're a small, scrappy startup breaking laws that protect people from bad businesses in their service, and to earn their gratitude, then you'll likely be okay; but if you're breaking laws to "achieve growth" but earning people's spite in the process (you know, those "people who weren't gonna be your customers anyway, so screw 'em"), then please don't follow my advice. Don't go out on any limbs. Stay well inside, where we won't have to deal with you.)
It reminds me of a story from one of Malcolm Gladwell's books. I forget the point he was trying to make but something went wrong with a patients surgery so he approached a lawyer and said he wanted to sue the surgeon. After reviewing the details, the lawyer said the surgeon is not at fault and that his family doctor should be the one that the lawsuit should be directed at for a poor recommendation.
The client responded "But I don't want to sue my doctor - I like him."
Personally, I don't find anything ethically wrong with what they did. And I think a lot of people on this thread have not lived in other countries that aren't completely over regulated.
The laws this thread contends they're violating strike me as falling into the category of public safety, e.g. proper labeling of spirits, Department of Health guidelines (http://blog.speakeasy.is/day/2013/07/23), etc. Viscerally, these don't strike me as the type of laws we want to championing start-ups into breaking.
But fuck laws, right? What really kills me about these guys is that they represent the cancer that is killing HN - all hustle, no authenticity. Instead of coordinating with local distilleries for a co-promotion event they fill Ikea bottles with "a cheap, mass-produced Russian vodka" and stick a fake label on the side. This is the definition of "grey-hat SEO 'growth hackers.'"
I was making the point on principle: there are quite a few Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do-type laws[1] on the books, which indeed protect people from scammers that don't have their best interests at heart; but where, if you do have people's best interests at heart (and know what you're doing enough to not, say, use unsterilized bottles), the laws are actually giving consumers a suboptimal result, and people will be grateful for the things you can do for them by skirting them.
For an example of what I do think is a valid "hustle", say you're holding an event and selling tickets. You have the idea of getting your friend--who owns a nicely pimped-out bus, and who has a commercial driver's license (so you know they can drive that thing safely)--to come around and pick people up and take them to the event as a free service. You're probably still breaking all sorts of little laws there--taxi or limo laws, certainly--but the customers who take you up on that service are getting a better experience than if they had to arrange transportation separately.
This, on the other hand, is closer to the line. I think, if they had been doing anything "food-processing-y" to the vodka, like adding a flavorant or something, I'd be less okay with it; as it was, though, they just did a bottle-filling and a labeling, which anyone with experience in home kit-wine/kit-beer making knows how to do safely. I would say that, in my own mind, at least, it's similar to buying bulk-ketchup at Costco and then printing up ketchup packets with your brand-logo on them and giving them away at your restaurant.
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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain't_Nobody's_Business_If_You_...