iamchmod

The best in my opinion to protect yourself is to have a great relationship with the partner. Meet with them regularly, listen to their concerns, share your concerns, yada, yada. There is really no protection against a bad partner that doesn't involve legal bills either upfront writing up a completely protective contract (which will spook other side anyways) or when disputing with them and needing to bring in the lawyers once things go south. The best prevention is to choose partners wisely and bring any concerns up quickly. You aren't going to have great partners 100% of the time, but if you can get to 80% of the time that saves a ton of stress, hassle and money

$200K isn't enough for you to bother doing all the research to maximize your yield. Just keep making money and improving your business. Then when you hit a scale where you have a CFO/VP Finance, let them worry about how to make a couple extra percentage points on all the billions of spare capital you have floating around. For the time being you have way more important things to do like doubling your revenues and maintaining the same margin. Good luck!

You need an experienced hand to help you with this. Don't do these negotiations yourself. You aren't objective. Think of it from this perspective, this is probably your biggest asset and if executed on properly an acquisition will provide for you and your family for the rest of your life. So bring in an expert. When selling a house, you use a realtor, when selling a company use a banker. My personal friend on banker is Mike Lyon with Vistapoint Advisors. But find a referral out of your own network so you are comfortable or call Mike.

Some of the items in the list above are allegations from the FTC and some of them were admitted by Jason - you can't lump facts and allegations together that's guilty until proven innocent.

Do any of the FTC have much business or technology experience? SEC is run by ex-bankers, should FTC be run by ex-marketers?

How much of Jason's settlement will actually go back to affected consumers? Zero. It will go into the FTC's budget.