
Bonsai: Bulletproof contracts, simple e-signing, escrow for freelancers - tilt
https://www.hellobonsai.com/
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bkrob
This is my first time posting on Hacker News.

Can I just say that you should be very careful about describing your contracts
as "Bulletproof".

There is honestly no such thing as a bulletproof contract.

Secondly, telling people that "top attorneys" drafted the contracts is
meaningless. That strikes me as just pure throw away marketing speak.

There are many things to consider when drafting this type of agreement and I'm
just not sure that your description of the service should give freelancers
great comfort.

Just my two cents. I do love the idea and know first hand the importance of
having a contract in place.

~~~
gexla
Apparently they didn't run the marketing of the contracts by the attorneys.

I don't know much about law, but a lawyer told me that law isn't black and
white. It's gray. So, bulletproof probably goes against that.

~~~
michaelbuddy
Bullet resistance then. Must leverage ballistics-speak when describing legal
processes.

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burkek
"1.5 Invoices. The Developer will invoice the Client for work done weekly. The
Client agrees to pay the amount owed within 21 days of receiving the invoice.
Payment after that date will incur a late fee of 5% ."

Fee being yearly or monthly? When setting up the variables it was displayed as
monthly - but this is not conveyed anywhere in the contract which will default
to the Clients best interest (yearly).

~~~
randallsquared
Is it a fee or an ongoing interest penalty? If a fee, then wouldn't it be 5%
one time?

~~~
pyre
A one-time fee incentives them to not pay late, but once they are already
late, there is no more incentive since they have already incurred the 5% fee.

~~~
mthomasb
Indeed, still exploring carrot and stick options here to get clients to pay on
time.

One nice idea we've come across is a trivial discount for early / on time
payment (~1-3%). We've heard anecdotally that it helps!

~~~
s73v3r
I hope that's coming out of your share.

~~~
pyre
You just quote high enough that the "discounted" rate is the real rate and the
not "discounted" rate is the penalty rate. Then you're just rephrasing things
(discount vs. penalty) to put a better spin on it.

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willyyr
This looks quite interesting. A couple of things i would like to see are:

\- sample without the need to provide an email e.g. show at least one and
offer more samples when email is provided

\- what's the pricing / cut you take from the money transferred through your
service?

~~~
mthomasb
One of the makers of Bonsai here. Thanks for checking us out!

\- Agree re email. Reason we did that is we realized most people don't have
the need to create a contract immediately, and unless they bookmark us, they
may not remember "that cool website that does my contracts for me..."
Providing the sample contract + other relevant educational material in the
meantime to stay top of mind was the best short term way to do that.

\- Regarding transaction fee, right now we're really only looking at escrow,
which depending on the transaction size and deal we're able to get from the
third party escrow provider, it should be somewhere around 2-5%.

~~~
eflowers
Re: email I did the opposite. I was ready to view it now, but waiting for an
email turned me off. So I tweeted it instead and hope I remember to go back to
my tweet. And, there's a part of me that says, in a nice way, "you haven't
earned my email yet."

Still, I love the idea and actually want to find a reason to use it.

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nxb
I've always liked the Elance / Freelancer escrow systems, in principal, and I
use them when buying services. But those sites have way too much of a low-end
feel for me to ask my own clients to pay me via those, for 5 or 6-figure jobs.

If this can be a high-end equivalent of those low-end escrow services, that
will be nice.

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kuriho
Skimming over the title and the URL, I was hoping to find a Bonsai
care/maintenance contractor network.

How do you reach your target audience with a company name and URL like yours?
Could you provide a sample contract without the need to enter a valid E-Mail
address?

~~~
mrestko
I always suffer the same confusion when I try to shop at amazon.com

~~~
aft42
In fact, I have yet to find an actual Amazon[1] on amazon.com, although I have
found books about them [2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-
alias%3Dap...](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-
alias%3Daps&field-keywords=amazons)

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danieltillett
Is anyone worried about the claim of being "bulletproof". This is like waiving
at red flag at a lawyer.

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mrwizrd
If only this existed for the United Kindgom. Looks like a great, accessible
service.

~~~
suhailpatel
Would love a service like this for the UK!

~~~
flarg
Yeah, but they'd need to cover what the IPSE/PCG contract template covers
already; for those few occasions where a client will accept it ...

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graeme
Looks interesting. I live in Canada and have contractors worldwide. I suspect
this is a typical case.

I don't really care about contracts but escrow would be useful. I mean, I
don't care about a formal legally binding contract that covers canada-
Indonesia, phillipines, UK, etc. that would be complicated. But having a
secure way to pay outside of elance/up work would be nice.

Also, when I click "let us know" it opens the mail app on my iPhone. I haven't
set that up. You would have better luck if the email was also displayed.

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pan_w
[http://bit.ly/panwlegaldocs](http://bit.ly/panwlegaldocs)

I recently open sourced my legal docs on Google Docs, so people could share
docs, ask questions, and help each other. Legal docs are expensive and the
language is very obscure. Let's utilize our legal experience and help each
other out. Here's my post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10100848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10100848)

------
matthewmcg
The sample contract is well drafted and the plain English style is refreshing.
The only bit of residual legalese is the bit before the signature blocks: "THE
PARTIES HERETO AGREE TO THE FOREGOING AS EVIDENCED BY THEIR SIGNATURES BELOW."

It's as if the drafters, after taking great pains to make the contract clear
and straightforward, decided "well we better put _some_ magic words in there
or people won't think this is a binding contract!"

~~~
stove
Really? I'm confused by the sample contract. Section 1.3 seems to be in direct
conflict with itself and also in conflict with Section 1.5.

    
    
      1.3 Payment. The Client will pay the Designer a flat fee of $10,000 once the work is finished. Of this, the Client will pay the Designer $2,500 before work begins.
    
      1.5 Invoices. The Designer will invoice the Client for work done monthly. The Client agrees to pay the amount owed within 15 days of receiving the invoice. Payment after that date will incur a late fee of 2% per month on the outstanding amount.

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jbrooksuk
Please, please support other countries such as the United Kingdom. This would
be ideal for me!

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civilian
What's the transaction cost for payments?

I'm a client who's just looking for a cheaper/nicer way to send payments to my
freelancers.

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joelrunyon
Similar contracting type service => [http://ourdeal.com](http://ourdeal.com)

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egusa
i just registered; great job with the user-experience. i think the team made
it really easy to use.

