

Ask HN: ToS and Legal Liability - dome82

When do you start considering a ToS for your MVP &#x2F; projects? Do you use some online services or a real lawyer?<p>What about legal liability? Is it better to open a company to reduce it? 
What happens if you launch an app&#x2F;website under your fullname? Is it a bad idea?<p>Many questions but thanks in advance for your help. I am a bit confused about these topics.....<p>Cheers, Domenico
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patio11
This is one of the classic ways in which developers justify not starting
things because of unfounded fears of success. Fears of litigation are vastly
overblown, because nobody cares about your business and won't for a while yet.

ToS: Feel free to grab from any of my businesses and find/replace as
necessary, or use WordPress.org's one, which they've "OSSed". You can have a
lawyer write you one, if you want to spend a few thousand dollars, but it is
unlikely it will meaningfully affect your outcomes.

Legal liability: Your main way to avoid liability is not pissing anyhow off so
much that they want to sue you. You can incorporate an LLC cheaply, and should
do so when you hire, take investment, want to sell to the Fortune 500, or are
instructed to by your lawyer or accountant.

n.b. You can also buy insurance for this. It may be called professional
liability or errors and omissions insurance. My business' policy runs about
$3k a year. (The quote you get will likely be sensitive to what you are doing
and how large your business is.) I only got it after 8ish years into the
business, after I was in charge of hospital data and attempting to get largish
deals done with megacorps, who required it as a checkbox in their purchasing
process.

Launching an app/website under your full name is not a bad idea. You're going
to be discoverable regardless, it will just cost modestly more money, but not
nearly so much money as attempting to sue you, so if someone is that peeved
you're going to get sued regardless.

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dome82
Thank you Patrick.

This was really helpful. I did not know about these professional liability
insurances...:)

