
Our Team Won Startup Weekend and All We Got Was a Shitty New Boss - orf
https://medium.com/@rboyd/35f1d1f1f267
======
adekok
I think his response to someone suddenly "owning" the company is odd. Here's
what my response would have been:

\---- Hi, Billy. Thanks for telling us about your other company with your
friend. I'm a little disappointed that you weren't open that you're already in
this space. And that your existing company is in direct competition with the
one we all agreed to start that weekend.

However, I'm flexible. I'm willing to license my code to your other company
for a flat fee of $10,000. This includes all intellectual property rights to
my software.

That fee is reasonable given my time and experience. I think that the others
on the team will have similar opinions about their contributions.

If you choose to not take me up on my offer, I wish you luck finding
programmers to re-implement the software from scratch.

Sincerely, Programmer. \---

... does anyone not understand the legal rights behind IP? Billy has _zero_
rights to use the software in his existing company. He knows that, which is
why he's trying to bamboozle everyone.

Instead of arguing about an "existing" company, they need to talk about their
code. They own it. They control it. No one else has the legal right to use it.

What's the problem? They don't give Billy the right to use their code, and he
goes away.... or gets sued.

~~~
ryanbrunner
Does the 0.4% "handshake deal" potentially cause issues with this, though?
Couldn't that be construed as an offer for the work that was produced that
weekend?

If I was being uncharitable, I could say that the reason the 0.4% offer came
up in the first place was specifically to deal with this problem - by offering
a trivial amount of equity, Billy has an argument that the other programmers
were compensated for their time in a form that they mutually agreed to. Why
else would Billy bother making this arrangement?

~~~
dalke
No, the relevant copyright law does not accept a 'handshake deal' to transfer
copyright ownership as work for hire. Quoting from
[http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf](http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf)
:

> A work created by an independent contractor can be a work made for hire only
> if (a) it falls within one of the nine categories of works listed in part 2
> above and (b) there is a written agreement between parties specifying that
> the work is a work made for hire.

~~~
nmrm2
Is access to the biz dev IP probably included by a handshake deal?

~~~
dalke
What sort of IP are you talking about? There's no trademark infringement,
there's no patent. I didn't see mention of any trade secret, or anything that
sounds like a trade secret (eg, "information which is difficult for others to
properly acquire or independently duplicate").

If there's no law covering it, there's no IP.

------
kohanz
_The problem for them is: we are the powerful ones now._

...

 _We built this internet._

...

 _Actually, we are in charge now. You just haven’t realized it yet. Automate
or be automated. If you don’t know how to map out complex systems. If you
never got grounded as a kid for taking things apart. If you are too lazy or
unwilling to learn our ways. If you don’t work for us yet, you soon will._

The above lines are absolutely cringe-worthy and take away from what is for
the most part a decent account of the events. I can understand if someone
temporarily holds onto such feelings due to the emotional shock of being
wronged by someone else they consider a 'bully' (but really just sounds like
an immoral/unethical businessman). However, if you actually hold onto this
mindset day-to-day, I would say that is problematic.

~~~
untog
That combined with the frequent references to Billy being in good shape and
going to the gym just felt like a really heavy handed attempt to get "nerds on
board against the jock".

~~~
gress
And what did you think of Bobby's emails? All just fine to you?

~~~
untog
I'm not sure what point you're making here. I don't see how those two things
are connected.

------
chipgap98
The author of this piece doesn't really sound like a much better person than
this Billy character. He sounds extremely entitled and arrogant. Just because
"we build the Internet" doesn't mean we own the world. Billy's handling of the
situation and his open homophobia are deplorable, but so it thinking you're
superior to everyone can't hack. This kind of attitude is a big problem in our
industry

~~~
late2part
I've known Bobby for 20 years now, and while this makes me biased, this also
makes me informed.

Bobby is not entitled or arrogant. He works hard and preserves friendships. He
has a strong sense of fairness, and it's my perception it was extremely riled
by the actions of Billy.

Bobby's assertions about the software development being more important than
the good-old-boy networks and the braggadocio are generally celebrated in this
forum, I don't see why there's a minority backlash.

I believe it's clear from what I read that this situation had a non-technical
"co-founder" try to screw over technical co-founders, and Bobby is calling him
out on it and using it as a teaching moment.

~~~
gmarx
I don't understand this. I read the entire thing and even though it is from
the authors point of view, to me he come across poorly relative to the
business guy. The only thing I can see the business guy is accused of is that
he didn't make it clear enough that he has been working on this idea for 18
months and has an LLC. The author acts as if it is obvious this guy is an
asshole but aside from going to the gym and having blond hair and saying "gay
shit" (without any clear reference to homosexuality) what did he do that made
him an asshole? Even the joke he made that was supposed evidence of his being
a bully was in response to the author's joke about remembering to throw the
team under the bus.

The author on the other hand comes across as a guy with a chip on his
shoulder. Based on this article I would be reluctant to work with him.

~~~
jeremiep
I had the same impression. The constant "we built this internet" and "we run
the show now" displays so much ignorance and insecurity about our field its
not even funny anymore. These people usually can't explain the first thing
about how the internet actually work, even if they can build websites every
day.

I couldn't help but be reminded of the Dunning-Kruger Effect while reading
this article.

~~~
late2part
I might be off a little on my facts here, but Bobby left high school early to
come work at GlobalCenter, before it was bought by Frontier, before it was
bought by Global Crossing. He worked on early MPLS and helped grow the
Internet very substantially. Bobby helped turn up one of the first 10G
Internet links. So, it's easy to cast arrows, but in this case Bobby actually
did real work in making the Internet grow back "in the day."

------
jrochkind1
Am I the only one that thinks Bobby the poster is acting oddly, with odd
expectations?

Maybe it's because I'm not familiar with norms around "Startup Weekend" type
events.

I have no doubt Billy the pitch man is an asshole (almost all restaurant
owners are, for one thing). I also think he's being completely reasonable
being confused about why this guy he just met thinks he should own a piece of
Billy's company.

But I confess I've never understood why anyone would want to go to a 'startup
weekend' kind of thing and code for free on someone elses business idea,
someone you've just met, in the first place.

I must be missing something about the general cultural expectations of such
events.

But it does seem odd to have an event focused on starting businesses (and
creating teams likely to work together in the future on the business?) among
people who have just met, with no written contracts involved (even
prohibited!) based just on cultural expectations which may or may not be
shared, and no time to discuss them or get to know each other in advance. Do
successful teams actually get created from this process sometimes?

~~~
jessedhillon
No, you're not the only one. The guy wants 40 basis points for 10-20 hours of
work. In real companies, you would have to work 4 years to get that kind of
equity. He thinks he's a founder of the internet when he's actually a guy in
backwater Texas giving himself _way too much credit_ for modeling a basic CRM
schema.

To paraphrase a former governer of Texas, he was born on third base and thinks
he hit a triple.

~~~
SwellJoe
_" In real companies, you would have to work 4 years to get that kind of
equity."_

When Billy builds a "real company" he can make those kinds of deals with
developers. Right now, Billy has nothing like a real company. He has an idea,
no ability to execute by himself, and a 50% partner who also can't execute
said idea.

Startups are not real companies, and equity for working on a startup is very
different than equity for working on a real company.

A real company also expects to pay market rates for developers. So, by that
metric Billy should have been paying these developers $50-$150/hour (depending
on market, experience, etc.) for these 20-30 hours worth of work, if they were
contractors rather than employees. It sounds like at least some of the team
has enough experience to be on the high end of the rate scale, and if they
actually delivered some sort of working prototype in that time, they certainly
delivered value.

------
1wd
I'm confused by the 0.4%. Who was intended to own the other 98.4%?

> "contracts aren’t allowed from the event"

Isn't this kind of conflict pretty much guaranteed then?

From
[http://startupweekend.org/about/firsttimer/](http://startupweekend.org/about/firsttimer/):

> "How do teams address the issue of IP/ownership? As with any startup, the
> team decides. Startup Weekend doesn’t support or take part in the signing of
> any legal documents at the events themselves, and while Mentors with legal
> backgrounds are often present and able to give general advice, they are not
> permitted to give specific legal counsel.While it doesn’t hurt to be clear
> about your individual expectations from the start, we’ve found that teams
> who don’t spend time addressing this issue until it actually matters (i.e.,
> there is a tangible product to have ownership of) are much more productive
> and successful than those who do."

Oh, but it's more "productive" during the weekend. OK...

~~~
metamet
0.4% seems like nothing, too. That was very confusing to me.

~~~
jessedhillon
40 basis points is an insanely large grant for 10-20 hours of work. They
wanted 160 bps: 40 _per person_. At any normal company, you would have to work
4 years to get that amount. If you work at a company as engineer number 1-5,
prior to any funding, you _might_ expect 50-300 points, over 4 years, after
working for a small salary, and under highly uncertain conditions.

These expectations are ridiculously misaligned and totally unreasonable.

~~~
nostrademons
Why exactly would you take 0.5-3% to work for a startup with no money under
highly uncertain conditions, when you can take 33-100% of equity to found a
startup with no money under highly uncertain conditions?

~~~
jessedhillon
> _Why exactly would you take 0.5-3% to work for a startup with no money under
> highly uncertain conditions_

Because you believe in the team, the idea and the opportunity.

> _when you can take 33-100% of equity to found a startup with no money under
> highly uncertain conditions_

Those who can, will.

But this guy wants to do neither. He wants 0.4% for 20 hours, and then he
wants to walk away and let someone else build up the value of the company.
Assuming his total stake is ~12%, that's equivalent to a demand for a 4 month
vesting schedule with no cliff, for what? A weekend?

He doesn't want to found a startup -- he wants to spend one weekend building a
shitty prototype. He's not talking about being there when the thing goes live,
fixing the broken deployment, troubleshooting the errors -- you know, the
actual work which keeps the customers satisfied. He's talking about writing a
model one time, and letting someone else take all the risk.

~~~
nostrademons
Well, if you can find someone who believes in your idea that nobody will pay
for, the opportunity that you can't prove exists, and the team where some
folks are taking 90%+ and others are getting 0.5-3%...more power to you. This
is why startups find hiring, hard, though. These folks are a.) hard to find
and b.) prone to leaving when they realize they're slaving away for virtually
nothing.

And IMHO, pretty much everything in this story is set up for failure. This is
not how startups get founded. Actual startups get founded by a team working
for equal or nearly equal shares, who do all of the work necessary to build
something that people want, and then either take funding or use revenues to
hire people _once they can pay market-rate salaries_. Startup Weekend is for
meeting people. 0.4% equity deals with no salary are for wasting time on a lot
of drama.

~~~
jessedhillon
> _and the team where some folks are taking 90%+ and others are getting
> 0.5-3%_

I'm not sure how you keep missing this key part of the argument: 0.4% _over 20
hours_. I've italicized the part which I find ridiculous, so that you can
better understand where I am placing my emphasis. Him wanting an equal share
for an equal amount of work -- no problem. Him wanting to get a full, post-
funding engineer's grant for 20 hours: wild overestimation of his own
contribution.

~~~
nostrademons
I'm missing that point because of this part of your original comment:

 _> At any normal company, you would have to work 4 years to get that amount.
If you work at a company as engineer number 1-5, prior to any funding, you
might expect 50-300 points, over 4 years, after working for a small salary,
and under highly uncertain conditions._

It's not normal to work 4 years to get 0.5-3% equity, prior to any funding,
under highly uncertain conditions. If the company is funded, growing quickly,
and paying you market-rate salaries, sure, that _might_ be fair. But if it's
just a bunch of guys with an idea, you're pretty crazy to take that deal, and
even crazier to keep working on it for 4 years.

It's also not normal to take 0.4% for 20 hours of work, but that's largely
because it's pretty crazy to actually expect to start a startup at Startup
Weekend. Go use networking events to meet people, and then if you like & trust
the people, make a commitment to working with them for a longer period of time
for normal founder equity stakes.

~~~
jessedhillon
> _It 's not normal to work 4 years to get 0.5-3% equity, prior to any
> funding, under highly uncertain conditions._

What is that based off of? I've seen that plenty of times to know that it's
quite common. I've never seen employees #1-5 being treated like a cofounder,
so from my experience, what you're describing is way off base.

> _But if it 's just a bunch of guys with an idea, you're pretty crazy to take
> that deal, and even crazier to keep working on it for 4 years._

A bunch of guys who are paying you ( _admittedly below market_ ). And yeah, if
you keep the same salary after 4 years, after multiple rounds raised, after
various milestones met, yes you're woefully underpaid.

~~~
nostrademons
I know a number of guys (roughly a half dozen startups) that have taken the
"Let's get college students to work for us for cheap, or recent grads who are
really excited about breaking into the startup scene." Their startups have
_all failed_ , without exception. The best outcome was a talent acquisition
that netted the founders slightly less than they would've made working for
Google over that time period (they were both ex-Googlers).

I also know 2 guys who have exited for ~$80-110M after taking $5-7M in
funding, plus the founder of a unicorn who once asked me if I was interested
in being employee #2. They all followed the same pattern: the founders built
the initial product, they found customers willing to use it, they got funding,
and _then_ they hired people. (For completeness, I know an additional half
dozen or so people that have followed the same pattern without success,
usually getting absorbed back into a big company or other startup that's
already gotten funding.)

A dozen data points isn't a statistical survey, but I know which strategy I'd
rather follow (and _am following_ ).

There's a big seedy underworld in the startup scene that's filled with people
working on bad ideas, with minimal funding or just their own savings & credit
card loans, who try to get anyone they can to work with them for really cheap
rates and small equity promises. Usually these startups end in drama, as they
go belly-up and people realize they've spent years being underpaid. If you'd
like to be a part of this scene, more power to you, but I'd rather steer
clear.

If you want the argument-from-authority perspective, here's Sam Altman:

[https://twitter.com/sama/status/610902540608122880](https://twitter.com/sama/status/610902540608122880)

~~~
jessedhillon
I think we're talking past each other at this point. I've seen enough deals
happen (I used to work in VC) to know that nobody pays the first employees 40
basis points for weekend. Teams cofounding a company together is a different
situation, and that's not what we're talking about here. I've consistently
been making the point that expecting a 0.4% chunk of a company for building a
first prototype is delusional. Your stories of people agreeing to start
companies together and waiting until they find P/M fit before they hire up are
all great and agreeable, but totally non-sequitur.

------
volaski
I have a feeling this will be downvoted like hell but objectively speaking, if
this Billy guy really wanted to, couldn't he just drop the software and let
these "teammates" do whatever they want with it, and hire another developer
and start from scratch? I'm saying this because I don't believe there's much
value in some software built over a weekend which doesn't have any users yet.
(Maybe it does but the users probably came and will come from this Billy guy's
sales and marketing due to his expertise). Compare this with for example
GroupMe, which is a pure consumer app, which blew up over a hackathon weekend.
In this case it was the app (which was built by the team members) that brought
users. If one of the founders wanted to go build another groupme clone after
the event, he could, but it wouldn't get enough users anyway that way. I am
not saying I am rooting for this Billy. He's an asshole and everyone knows
that. I'm saying this Bobby guy is not so much better either. I couldn't help
feel disgusted reading the entire passive aggressive thread, plus the fact
that he posted this on Medium in an attempt to "bully" Billy.

~~~
dba7dba
Billy had 18 months, 18 months to work on the idea. Obviously he couldn't find
designers/coders/PM for the cheap to build it so he went with the bait-and-
switch route. I can almost imagine the conversations he had giggling with his
partner as the 'fuxxing nerds' were pounding away on the keyboards.

Like, "oh my these stupid fuxxing nerds. They may know code but they don't
know shxt about business and using people."

I prefer passive aggressive over passive passive (aka slave).

If the story is true, Billy deserves the 'bullying'. Did you read the shxt he
tried to pull on the coders?

"I had the idea for 18 months and filed for LLC, so I own it." Really?

Yes, I think your comment deserves a downvote...

~~~
silverbax88
As opposed to "I showed up and worked 20 hours on your idea, so I own it." ?

I can't see either side being 'right' here.

~~~
dba7dba
Bobby never said he owned it. He didn't have hidden agendas going into the
competition.

Billy says he owns it. Billy did have a hidden agenda.

Bobby at least owns a lot more than 0.04% of the company.

Had Billy hired the coders to do the work and say I own the company, I have no
problem with that. But here, Billy tricks people to work on a project without
fully disclosing his intention for virtually free, and than he claims he owns
the company.

It's pretty clear who's wrong and who's right.

~~~
nimblegorilla
You're probably right, but remember that we are only hearing the story from
Bobby's side.

~~~
angersock
A side replete with evidence from emails and chats.

It's like people have forgotten that we've got a lot easily-recordable
evidence these days.

~~~
nimblegorilla
The only problem is that Bobby doesn't provide and emails and slack
conversations until after things started to go sideways.

It's like people have forgotten that anyone can cherry-pick evidence to put
themselves in the best light.

------
ozgung
I was in the winning team in SW once and another time in the second team.
Story is very familiar. I think the key takeaway is that you should never take
SW seriously. Hackathons are not the way the startups are built. It's not a
real team and it's not a real startup. That's why Billy character here is
wrong. If you have a real business idea and serious plans don't pitch your
project in SW. In an hackathon, every team member should have the equal rights
on the project, regardless of their contribution level. Just have fun during
the weekend, share the prizes equally if you win. And after the weekend, just
throw away all the code, the brand identity or any other IP. If some of the
team members want to further pursuit the idea, they are free to do whatever
they want starting from scratch. If you want to make a handshake deal before
start, agree on these principals. I know its hard to think like that with all
the adrenaline in your blood but this is the only way it would work out. So I
think the 0.4% deal at the beginning was the first sign that this story won't
turn out so well.

~~~
forgetsusername
" _Hackathons are not the way the startups are built. It 's not a real team
and it's not a real startup. "_

I could not agree more. It's a curse of the Silicon Valley mentality; anything
can be hacked together in a weekend!

In real life, businesses aren't built with a bunch of random personalities
thrown in a room, cobbling an idea together for a weekend. It demonstrates how
much value SV places on "code" over "business".

------
cmpxchg
Just as the restaurant owner sounds like he has a tendency to take credit for
more than he actually did, the software engineers here sound as if they have
an irrational belief in the importance of their own contribution relative to
that of others. And an ego problem. "A dream team of developers"? It's 2015
and you built a simple website in Python.

Both sides in this story need to grow up if any of them ever want to launch a
successful business.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Do you understand how hard it is for an 'idea guy' to recruit a technical
team? There's a wonderful Dilbert where the boss says "I have a great idea; I
just need a technical team and investors". Alice replies "The economic term
for what you have is 'nothing'"

~~~
forgetsusername
> _" Do you understand how hard it is for an 'idea guy' to recruit a technical
> team?"_

I just read an article where a guy walked into a Hackathon and convinced a
dream team to build his app, for free. The "ideas are worthless, execution is
everything" is a curse. It's perpetuated by "technical" people to assert their
value. The truth is both the idea _and_ execution are extremely valuable.
Don't believe it? Go look at all the beautiful apps in the app store that make
nothing. Execution of terrible ideas.

It isn't difficult to recruit a technical team. Like it or not, with a good
idea it hardly takes a "Python Dream Team" like in the article to get
something done. Most applications aren't pushing technical boundaries. What it
takes is _money_.

You know what is difficult? Convincing your banker to give you that money.
That takes an idea and sales skills (both of which, apparently, Billy had).

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That is a succinct validation of that 'curse'. App store full of beautiful,
worthless apps? Because nobody can tell which idea is a good one. Thus,
marginal value of 'idea' is pretty near zero.

Go to any 'meetup', its almost all 'idea people' and no tech talent. That
means, its very hard to find that talent.

It doesn't take a 'dream team', no, but it does take _some team at all_. To
get that, you have to convince Engineers your idea is good. Almost as hard as
convincing the money men.

So lets reword: its hard to get the money, and hard to recruit the talent.
That leaves the ideas, which are a dime a dozen. Clear?

~~~
forgetsusername
> _" Because nobody can tell which idea is a good one._

Maybe because none of them are?

Again, you're assuming that these are all "great ideas", that just _can 't_ be
discovered. I'm claiming the opposite. Go grab an app at random. I'll bet you
it's an attractive, functional app that's utterly pointless. Thousands of
people have executed their terrible ideas.

> _you have to convince Engineers your idea is good_

Exactly. The idea is important. As is the execution.

> _That leaves the ideas, which are a dime a dozen. Clear?_

Ideas are a dime a dozen. So are technical people. Good ideas are not, just as
good technical people are not.

If I were starting a business, I'd take a great idea and random technical
people over great technical people and a completely random idea.

------
bakhy
the author might want to tone down the pretentious comments about ruling the
world. sorry, but world rulers don't get screwed like this.

although i believe that the Billy guy is a jerk (but no, BTW, does not really
seem a bully), i kinda had a harder time sympathizing when comparisons with
google started flying, while what they were developing was a seemingly usual
web app, whose only distinction was the actual business idea, and even that
was not original. and why enter into something like this with unknown people,
sacrifice family time, work like an ass day and night, all without any
contract - i'll never get that. the whole event is simply preposterous.

------
noelwelsh
Neither side made their expectations clear at the beginning. I can't find
either blameless. I also don't believe that engineering is the most important
factor for the kind of product being described. For what the author calls
"secrets", yes. Early Google was just so much better than the competition that
it won. However, a lot of tech history shows that marketing trumps tech in
many cases. Windows wasn't technically superior to OS/2 for example.

~~~
puranjay
Honestly, the OP is trying to be a bit ingenious trying to push the example of
PageRank into the argument. Google's core advantage is its tech. The PageRank
algorithm was so much better than anyone else on the market that it was bound
to win.

In this case, there is no real innovative, patent-worthy tech. It's just an
idea with some very basic tech any developer worth his salt can put together
in months if not weeks.

I see this all the time: developers confuse pure tech companies (like Google
or SpaceX) with tech-supported companies.

~~~
rurban
Oh no, again this PageRank myth.

Google won, because it was fastest and had good links.

Fastest was more important than better links. How did they get faster than
their competitors? They bought cheap servers all over to beat the
transportation times to the clients. Also their page was smaller, not
overloaded, so the results could be presented faster.

Their bot was also more aggressive. A more aggressive bot contributes more to
the link quality than the algorithm, because you get deeper and new stuff more
timely. People are searching for new stuff.

That's how Google won. Not because of PageRank alone. PageRank was a
contributing factor. But renting out cheap servers in every datacenter out
there and keeping the page small and fast and dealing with the consequences of
cheap servers (HD fails, fallbacks, ...) was more important.

~~~
jrochkind1
Eh, I remember the early days of Google, their results really were a LOT
better than the existing competition (AltaVista? other?). Whether that was
mostly due to the PageRank 'secret' or not, I couldn't say (and we all know at
this point Google's relevance algorithms are orders of magnitude more complex
than a 'PageRank secret'), but people didn't just start using Google because
it was fast, but because they found what they were looking for much better
than in existing solutions. In my memory.

~~~
QuercusMax
That's absolutely correct. AltaVista wasn't slow (until they filled their page
with garbage; they were originally as minimal as Google), but you'd have to
hunt through pages and pages and pages of results. Google usually found what
you were looking for right away. This is what I remember from 1999 - I had
been using AltaVista as my primary search engine for several years, and once I
found Google I started using it almost exclusively because it was so much
better.

------
anjc
Bobby needs to learn how to deal with people in a productive and non-passive-
aggressive fashion. If you got fucked over, it's through your own doing.

The "we are the nerds, we built the blah blah" is terribly cringey. Awful
stuff. There's no reason that a 'nerd' can't have an interpersonal and
business acumen.

------
jeremysmyth
I've no idea what the licensing agreement was before they sat down to write
the code, but if it was as informal as the handshake-that-wasn't, I'm gonna
put forward the following idea:

 _By default, code belongs to the author of that code. Unless another
agreement is in place, Bobby owns his own contributions to that project._

With that thought, the potential outcomes of this become a little clearer.

~~~
organsnyder
If no contracts were signed, I wonder if that would be the default, anyways.
If it were to go to court, the absence of a contract would signify that no
change of ownership has occurred, and since the work was done for free, there
would be no implicit agreement of work-for-hire. Therefore, deciding ownership
would be a simple (ha!) matter of examining the commit logs.

I was in a business (music publishing) for a number of years that dealt
heavily with copyright law, but IANAL, so I could be way off here.

------
retube
2 questions:

1) Pre-weekend: why would you only accept 0.4% equity? Given there was nothing
but the idea the company was worthless. So why wouldn't the guys building it
demand a much higher slice?

2) Post-weekend: given the company was basically just the code at this point,
the devs could have just said "no" to this guy and set up their own company.
Why wouldn't they have done that?

~~~
tinco
1) Because it was just one weekend of work. Not everyone might continue
working on/at the startup after the initial weekend. Would be weird if a fifth
of your startup is owned by some guy who helped out one weekend, even if that
weekend was the very first weekend. 2) They totally could, and Bobby did,
right? There is the question of IP though. What parts of the IP are of Billy's
LLC? I'd agree that the code made that weekend is not, it's bound under
whatever the team agreed to. But the idea of the company might really be
Billy's, even if that conflicts with the competitions rules or spirit a judge
would still have to rule on that.

Dick move by Billy, but the end result is only a wasted weekend.

~~~
tommccabe
Serious question- does the team then negotiate new terms after the weekend for
those that do want to stay on-board? Who holds the 98.4% in the meantime?

~~~
jdbernard
The impression I got was that the 0.4% was a guarantee for what you walk away
with. If you stayed you would work out ownership of the whole thing with the
rest of those who stayed to build the new startup.

~~~
nols
Yes, Billy states this as well in his email.

[https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/762/1*PvteoogYHJ_zJ0MD4i...](https://cdn-
images-1.medium.com/max/762/1*PvteoogYHJ_zJ0MD4isyIw.png)

~~~
jrochkind1
That email from Billy seems pretty reasonable to me. Not to you guys more
familiar with 'Startup Weekend' cultural expectations?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
The guy didn't belong in a startup weekend. The team at the weekend is
supposed to own/share the results. Not some guy who can't recruit engineers
and uses startup weekend to defraud the real talent to promote himself.

------
ctvo
It was a web application in Python. It was at a startup weekend. It was 2-3
days of work. Can we let it go? Do we have to go to the internet to post about
it with screenshots of chatlogs and all?

I feel so awkward reading this post.

~~~
caminante
You're NOT being fair at all in saying, "It was [just] 2-3 days of work."

Why disregard the full scope of opportunity costs the author mentions?

He's not banking on a lucrative outcome. He's sacrificing time with the family
AND rest on the weekend. Now, multiply that by the size of the team.

Taking what the author says at face value, he got stuck with a duplicitous
character who single-handedly dragged a team into violation of the hackathon's
terms. The event explicitly asked for relevant disclosures.

As others mention too, his documentation's a valuable urge to caution.

------
frankdenbow
Sorry you had a bad experience on the weekend. I've been a volunteer for 4
years so I have seen all permutations of teams that come to startup weekend
(been to at least 30 events).

People who come to SW and look at is as a free way to get something built for
their startup are not the target. It makes it a bit predatory and you get the
reactions that you experienced. I try to warn people of this but some folks
have their own ideas.

Coming with a team already formed also isn't ideal. The point of the weekend
is not to start a company, its to work alongside other people and go through
the exercise. With that mindset, you won't be disappointed when you "lose" but
you'll gain some experience and grow your network. Thats the main point of
going to the event.

If someone already is thinking about equity and contracts while doing a SW,
run the other way. Its the wrong attitude for starting a company in general
and in my experience generally ends up badly as they focus on the wrong things
at the wrong times in other ways as well.

~~~
broodbucket
I went to a SW just as a developer, and the first few teams I talked to
already had their MVP and were essentially feigning that they were a new idea.
Basically just wanted some free labour for the weekend...

Ended up making a team with nothing but devs and we built a silly hardware
prototype. We ended up winning, then stuck with our day jobs. We were all
taken our of our comfort zone, would definitely recommend SW despite the few
that try to take advantage of it.

As a shy dude who just writes code all day, it basically forced me to become a
better communicator.

~~~
crazypyro
I went to the same SW as the one mentioned in this post. Our team ended up
being almost all devs and 1 biz guy where we created a way to edit neural
networks with a web interface, a.k.a. no potential business/profitability. We
had a lot of fun (got an honorable mention) and I got to network with some
people, basically what I think to be the goal of a SW.

P.S. It was pretty obvious that Billy was looking for cheap devs when he gave
his pitch. The warning flags were there if you talked to him 1-on-1 at all.

------
jMyles
I'm surprised that the oppressive language ("gay shit" and "fucking nerds")
didn't come to a head sooner.

I've kicked people out of hackathons for less. Why let this slide in awkward
silence?

~~~
notNow
You mean offensive not oppressive and as with everything it depends on context
and really Bobby doesn't come off as straight as an arrow to me, he's as shady
as he claims Billy to be and if he got his way and Billy paid him off, I bet
my right arm we wouldn't have heard about those slurs at all but it's in his
best interest to stir the pot and defame Billy.

~~~
jMyles
> offensive not oppressive

What?! I mean 'oppressive language' as that phrase is used in various systems
of communications modeling, such as NVC and Active Listening. Why are you
saying that I mean something else?

> he's as shady as he claims Billy to be

This is, at best, a tu quoque fallacy. Why are you doing damage control?

At the end of the day, this isn't even about Bobby and Billy, but about all
the Bobbies and Billies you meet in the tech scene generally.

~~~
drewm1980
@jMyles, sadly, "oppressive language" is probably as jargony as "NVC" and
"Active listening" are for most people. If you aren't aware that a cultural
clique has changed a few characters in a common phrase to coin a phrase that
means something only slightly different, it just looks like a typo. I will
have to google "tu quoque"...

~~~
jMyles
"NVC" and "Active Listening" are jargon, and not terribly impressive jargon -
I'll warrant that.

But "oppressive language?" That just seems like a good descriptor of a
communications style that we all encounter from time to time. That's the
reason these "systems" have picked it up.

------
outdooricon
Looks like the startup is StaffedUp, src:
[http://missouribusinessalert.com/entrepreneurs/64346/2015/09...](http://missouribusinessalert.com/entrepreneurs/64346/2015/09/14/staffing-
software-staffedup-takes-top-prize-at-columbia-startup-weekend/)

~~~
devgutt
also [http://www.caledonvirtual.com/2015-startup-weekend-
columbia-...](http://www.caledonvirtual.com/2015-startup-weekend-columbia-
missouri/)

------
bitL
My sympathies to you - I am going through something similar - I just kicked
out my partner (and shutting down one of my companies as a consequence) who
was supposed to handle business side of our e-commerce company that I
almost-100% automated as he started to express exactly the same attitude as
Billy. He had 50% profit share yet became lazy to the point of refusing to
deal with customer returns and customer communication unless those are fully
automated as well (the company has 100 seller rating on Amazon, dozens of
5-star feedback only, significant revenue and was profitable for what amounts
to 5-10 minutes of effort a day).

Funny thing is I can respawn such a company in a week, yet all I got was some
stupid power game with very little work from his side and behaving like he was
my boss and I was his slave, working on his "ideas" (while he was invited by
me into this company based on the ideas I already executed in other companies
I created prior to this one and his task was to get the business-stuff load
off me so that I could focus on creating "intelligent" automated systems
instead of dealing with the boring business side).

Fail fast, kick out people that went full retard, they aren't worth your time
nor effort, seriously. You can do way better on your own.

~~~
Potswab
I also worked in a similar situation. The "business guy" who was also handling
customer emails, for a while became so slack he ignored people complaining
that an important feature of the site was broken. I happened to be scanning
through the emails when I found it. He also had a tendency to blame customers
for bugs and not even pass their feedback on to me some of the time. He
expressed the same attitude of "this is my company and you're lucky I let you
work for me (without proper pay)". He wasn't really even doing the business
part well, just riding on good Google rankings that he'd got from doing some
SEO years before. Turns out though that by not being his employee, most of the
code remained my IP. When we parted ways, I started up a new company in direct
competition and am now doing much better by keeping 100% of the profits
instead of the small share he'd been "generously" giving me before. He's kind
of stranded without a developer and not enough revenue to hire one at market
rates.

~~~
bitL
Good for you! Good luck with your own company! ;-)

I only license my software to all companies I have in order to avoid being
stripped of my IP and I recommend it to anyone with a brain. Business guys
aren't your friends, and their view of us that have both ideas and
capabilities do execute is not very flattering. Usually they just want to ride
someone and once we serve our purpose, we are disposed of.

What is perplexing to me is that I offered him a very generous 50% share (the
intent was to motivate as well as to have the need to come with real solutions
when we hit some problem so that we are forced to agree on something and view
the issue from multiple angles to avoid tunnel vision) in exchange for him
doing the business stuff and customer side for the company (meaning arranging
suppliers, building supplier relationships, handling customer returns and
communication etc.) and having the ability to be plugged into a company that
requires very little work (the closest to the definition of "easy money" as I
could get) in super competitive environment of Amazon utilizing bleeding edge
tech I invented that gave us highest Amazon ratings, both internal as well as
customer satisfaction. Yet there was always enormous frustration of not having
that single dominating % more than me, worsening attitude to do the required
work, secretiveness, and once it started to manifest itself in not working on
customer issues in timely manner and alienating supplier relationships that
took a lot of time and effort to build, I had enough and kicked him out.
Funniest thing was him coming back and demanding my SW as well as credit for
his "ideas".

Well, you learn as you go, next time I will prepare stronger rules for
business guys.

Guys, to all of you, creating your own company costs you like $1000 in the US,
it's a fixed amount of additional stress you need to handle, you'll get used
to it quickly, and you don't have to waste your precious time with people that
have no clue what they are doing just want to use you to get rich for nothing.

~~~
rabidonrails
Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. You're talking about a bad
person, not a "business guy." If you partner with a person who doesn't care
about how he interacts with the people around him and has a faulty moral
compass, it doesn't make a difference if he's a developer or a business guy.

This is really a warning to make sure that you know who you're getting into
bed with when creating a company. Don't just work with someone so that you can
say you have a co-founder, find someone with whom you have a mutual respect.

------
Asbostos
I think people irrationally get offended by swearing. There's a big difference
between "you're gay" meant to insult somebody and "whatever gay shit you want"
indicating that they think the content might be too unimportant, pretentious
or touchy-feely. None of them have anything to do with actual homosexuals and
doesn't sound like homophobia at all, just misunderstandings of different
cultures.

That said, it can be a clue that the person might be generally disrespectful
of others and to be on the lookout for real harm they may do. Though it's a
dangerous slide from "does what bad people do" to "is a bad person" which is a
kind of discrimination.

~~~
oddevan
I think the issue in the article was that someone in the group took offense
and called out said speaker on his language, and the speaker just fumbled
around instead of apologizing. Even a quick "Yeah, sorry," would have at least
been a gesture at respect.

With the number of people and experiences out there, we're going to offend
people. What matters is how we behave when we're called out.

So you're absolutely right in that "it can be a clue that the person might be
generally disrespectful of others."

~~~
Asbostos
You know, I don't know what to do on the spot when somebody shows offence at
my jokes. Apologizing indicates you think you did something wrong and makes an
implicit promise to change your behavior (forever!). Not something to
instinctively respond with or you end up apologizing for all kinds of
genuinely harmless things and people will take advantage of that.

------
brador
I love the corporate passive-aggressive replies from all involved. Wonderful.

Not legal advice: I would wait it out, see if the business is a success, then
sue the hell out of the guy ala Winklevoss@Facebook. Better than a shit-tier
0.4% equity stake any day.

------
mgkimsal
The crux of this, imo, was (paraphrasing)

"dude, no one seemed interested in working on this after the weekend. I, on
the other hand, have been working on this for 18 months".

Well.. WTF. NO ONE KNEW THAT BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T TELL ANYONE. Or...
intentionally hid it, because you knew it was a dick move, or you're trying to
skirt rules you clearly knew about ahead of time.

"Dude... I don't know if _you 're_ committed, therefore you get < 1%. I _know_
I'm committed - it's taken me _18 months_ of planning my idea! _18 months_
I've worked on this! That you can build it in 24 hours just proves that _MY 18
MONTHS_ is worth a lot more." (to the degree there's a thought process going
on, that's part of the justification). It takes MONTHS to get investor
meetings set up (especially when you don't have a product yet!) - that's HARD
WORK. Sitting at a computer for 2 days? WTF?

~~~
logfromblammo
The labor theory of value is so quaint. 18 months without a viable product,
then 8 guys who had never worked together before, who just showed up at an
event that sounded like fun, bang out a prototype in one weekend. And for
them, it was _recreational_.

Do you know what it looks like to _me_ when someone who believes he is
committed and working hard for 18 months gets outdone by people _playing_ at
business for _one weekend_? It looks like someone taking credit for both sides
of Fischer vs. Kasparov, just because he provided the chess pieces. I can't
even begin to understand the cognitive defect that would allow for that.

The world might be better off without people like that, but it might also seem
a bit boring if they were gone.

------
logicallee
Pre-weekend:

>I’ll be honest: I thought it was a huge longshot and wasn’t that concerned.
All advice I read in the startup arena advises to be ready to sacrifice the
next 5+ years of your life in the pursuit, and most tech startups have abysmal
failure rates. Still, if John thought this was worth going after, sure,
umbrella me under your ask: 0.4% each for our efforts over the weekend.

That says it all. "Sure, umbrella me under your ask."

This coder agreed to that, he even was kind enough not to whitewash history in
his write-up to us so that we know he agreed to that. After it's taken off
suddenly Bobby feels like he is entitled to something more.

That's not the way agreements work :) Bobby is the one in the wrong in this
article, he spells it out in black and white. There is no gray area here -
absolutely crystal-clear.

If he didn't like the terms, he should have joined one of the losing teams
instead. If he thought the terms weren't valid, he should have mentioned this
instead of agreeing to them.

Here's a hint if you want to run the world, Bobby: your word - or handshake
agreements - actually mean something, and you stick by it.

~~~
nico_h
Reading comprehension 101: Identify the characters of a story and what happens
to them:

\- Protagonist, narrator : Bobby, Dev. knows John and 2 other devs, they meet
before the week end. Part of team 1.

\- Narrator's friend: John. Propose they draw up a contract with whoever they
end up teaming with so that everybody that work on the week end project ends
up with the 0.4% of the company if the project ends up being a company.

\- Antagonist: Billy, Business / Idea guy. Pitch the idea to the team, then
decline to agree to the 0.4% agreement. Propose a "Handshake Deal",
unspecified terms, without shaking hands. Starts an LLC based on the
StartupWeekend efforts with "JP", a friend and other business guy, who was not
present at the startup weekend. Together, Billy and JP own 100% of the LLC.
Says devs might join the LLC, described as being hostile to sharing equity in
the company, but might be an option.

What happens in the story:

At the beginning of the story, Bobby and John listen to Billy's pitch. They
approach him and say they are interested in his idea.Billy propose they join
with another team (Brad's, another 4 dev team). They do.

Billy declines to agree to a 0.4% equity sharing. Offers the "Handshake
agreement", terms unspecified, without shaking hands.

All 9 work on the idea over the week end.

Billy end up presenting the idea onstage with his picture on every slide.

The project ends up winning the "startup weekend" presentation.

... etc ...

\---

Did you read the story?

~~~
logicallee
you're right, I did read quickly. In your reading under the agreement they
came to who would own the vast majority of the company? (i.e. all of it ex
0.4% * devs)?

This is what the text says:

>Billy brought along four other developer/designers he was already chatting
with: Josh, Clay, Hayden, and another John.

>Our John, Team Paladin John, then went on to introduce ourselves and his idea
for us to take 0.4% after helping launch the startup this weekend. That way
should anyone go forward with the work product and it become a big success, at
least there’s some kickback if this thing goes nuclear unicorn.

Also the way I read

>John explained that he’d spoken with Startup Weekend organizers and was told
that contracts aren’t allowed from the event, so he asked for a handshake
deal. Billy said he was happy with a handshake deal, and quickly moved the
conversation forward without any handshaking actually taking place.

is that this is what everyone implicitly agreed to. I don't find it credible
that "I'm happy with a handshake deal" and everyone moving forward isn't
evidence of a mutual understanding of what would happen after. The actors
acted as if everyone agreed that people would get 0.4% just for participating
in the weekend, the terms that were brought to Billy, and that Billy was happy
to agree to this.

The fact that these 0.4% terms came from Paladin's camp rather than Billy
makes it even more clear that the author is in the wrong.

It sounds to me like you're saying 0.4% has nothing to do with this story
whatsoever. It sounds to me like it was agreed on.

~~~
nico_h
I understood that the 0.4% deal meant that at the end, they would together
decide what happens with the project. Parties who decided to go forward and
create a company would give out 0.4% to the members of the team that would not
go forward in exchange for their week-end contribution.

>John explained that he’d spoken with Startup Weekend organizers and was told
that contracts aren’t allowed from the event, so he asked for a handshake
deal. Billy said he was happy with a handshake deal, and quickly moved the
conversation forward without any handshaking actually taking place.

I did misunderstand that paragraph. I thought that as "contract were not
allowed from the event" the "Handshake Deal" must have been something
different, like they would be all equal partners for example.

If the handshake deal means "we all agree to 0.4% equity if we do no further
work" it means at least that, Billy should have mentioned the 0.4% in the
message about the company being 50/50 with his friend.

Also, the idea was from Billy but the winning Startup Weekend project was a
joint effort, not something Billy hired Bobby, John, Brad, Jason (team
paladin), Josh, Clay, Hayden, and another John to do for him.

I think the feeling of betrayal from Bobby is that the company was founded,
with a third party, assuming to use the assets he and his friends worked on,
_without them being involved in the process in any way_.

The way things should have worked out for him to be happy would have been is
if after the end of the Startup week end they had mutually agreed on what to
do going forward. Instead, Billy moved forward and then asked the devs if they
wanted to join his company that he created.

------
Keyframe
Billy is a classic tale of 'an idea guy' where they work (hard, incredibly
hard) on whatever the fuck they're doing for years and have nothing to show
for. To be honest, in this case it's alluded Billy had biz contacts which is
(incredibly) valuable. Most of us have been in situations like these and know
what and how to recognize if it's valuable to join in or not.

On the other hand, Bobby has some issues going on which are out of the scope
of that little venture.

~~~
raverbashing
It's one thing to have 'just an idea', another one to have a business plan,
knowledge of the business details, contacts and potential customers, etc

Having that before 'the app' might be decisive.

(I'm not saying it's the case here, for all we know they might just have
thought of it and sat on it for two years)

~~~
Keyframe
I agree completely.

------
ilovefood
This happened to me too for a 3D Printing startup. The same exact scheme of
bullshit. Fellow developers, unite :)

I was just curious so I found this:

[http://www.staffedup.com/](http://www.staffedup.com/)

[http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/local/startup-weekend-
wi...](http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/local/startup-weekend-winners-
announced/article_a15e4a98-486a-5be5-9046-ba3ef1ba9fa0.html)

------
sixtypoundhound
And this is why we can't have nice things - a decent parable about why
"startup weekends" are the business equivalent of giving teenagers whiskey and
car keys:

For the sake of argument, assume the idea was actually good:

\- Legal ownership of the parts of the business are a mess; instead of it
being cleanly concentrated in 1 - 3 people, each of whom has a clear "vetted"
and "sustained" interest in the business, 8+ people now have options on any
success. Recipe for drama.

\- The screwed up ownership structure inhibits sane growth. The business is a
long way from functional; at least 3 - 4 of the eight people need to show up
for work next week and make sustained contributions for _months_ to get a
payback. Unfortunately, everyone present at the weekend can muscle in at the
end (if successful) and claim a share of that work. So the long term incentive
plan has been crippled....

\- This team is dysfunctional, at least in the relationship between business
guys and tech guys. Billy wasn't open and honest about past work on the
concept. He's incapable of controlling his prejudices and working with his
team in a respectful manner. This partnership... won't last. Outside the
pressure cooker of the event, it wouldn't have started.

\- If the business model is truly dependent on technology as the basis of
competition, this project is doomed; the business team doesn't respect the
value created by the technology side of the effort. Once you view your
technical staff as replaceable/exploitable, good luck on creating any value
beyond minimum effort results or finding good talent.

\- Finally, I think the technical team overvalues their work at this point;
there's a large business component that must be completed for anyone to make
money. The price that would satisfy them in a cash deal likely wouldn't be
feasible for the business team / investors to pay....

tl;dr wrong environment to create a business. More value and more fun would
occurred if they spent the weekend developing crazy Youtube animations or
JavaScript games....

------
pweissbrod
Several people concluding Bobby could have handled the situation better. I
agree, but I sympathize with Bobby because I've been in his shoes.

Folks there are several people that come to startup weekends with pre-planned
businesses, looking for cheap labor (aka "fucking nerds") to push them off
into profitability. When you enter any kind of hackathon it's on you to
recognize these people before you choose to engage in assisting them, and if
you dont, you have a bit of yourself to blame after the fact.

~~~
gress
No, Billy hid his pre-existing company from the team. Bobby doesn't have
himself to 'blame' for this deception. It's perfectly valid for him to respond
the way he has.

------
toadi
can't even understand someone goes to work on a handshake deal with strangers.
Have problems doing this even with friends. Once money is involved even
friends can act strange...

~~~
arethuza
Mind you - at the other extreme I've had someone invest £25K in a startup
based on a handshake who turned out to be utterly brilliant and a complete
gent.

He only looked slightly sour when he saw we'd stuck a copy of his cheque up on
the wall.... :-)

Of course, people like that are rare - but they do exist.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I know a couple of guys like this as well. While it's true that one can go far
in business by treading on people and screwing people over, being decent human
beings certainly doesn't seem to have held them back in life, at least.

~~~
BatFastard
This has happen to me more times then I would like to admit. <Quote> You have
to be trusted by the people that you lie to, So that when they turn their
backs on you, You'll get the chance to put the knife in. </Quote>
[http://www.pink-floyd-lyrics.com/html/dogs-animals-
lyrics.ht...](http://www.pink-floyd-lyrics.com/html/dogs-animals-lyrics.html)

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Oh, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't recommend anyone go into a business
arrangement - even with the seemingly nice guys - without proper safeguards
(ie contracts) in place!

------
_zachs
TBH reading through the entire piece didn't make Billy seem like the
asshole...

~~~
mikeokner
Regardless of how well-spoken he sounds in his emails, he still showed up to a
startup weekend hackathon with an established business and 50/50 partner that
he neglected to tell anyone about. Engineers go into events like that assuming
all interested parties are present and equal co-founders. Huge dick move to
deceive the engineers and subvert the event like he did.

------
ryan90
This it the epitome of Startup Weekends' short fall.

You simply can't start a company in a weekend. Even moreso, you can't expect
to start a company with a bunch of random people you just met.

This gets complicated by the fact that not only do the team members not know
each other, they inevitably all have day jobs. They all have different level
of skills. Not to mention that companies shouldn't be started by more than 2
or 3 people - teams at startup weekend are typically 6-8 as I recall.

And if a team wins, they think this somehow increases their chance of success
at starting an actual company.

I'm a big fan of the concept of startup weekend purely to raise awareness of
what it's like to start a company. But stop it there. Nobody be looking to
start a company out of a weekend event.

I'm not at all shocked at what happened here. And to the poster, it's your own
fault. If you actually thought you would start something with a random "idea
guy", well, lesson learned. At least read up on IP agreements first.

------
mcv
I don't really understand the concept of this Startup Weekend. People come
with ideas, volunteers work their asses off to make it happen, then the idea
guy gets all that stuff for free as well as a monetary award for having had
the best volunteers donate their code to him?

From where I'm sitting, it seems to be the programmers can start their own
company without Billy. Billy would probably add value due to his contacts and
having thought a lot about this idea already, but without the code, he still
has only an idea.

~~~
MatthewMcDonald
> I don't really understand the concept of this Startup Weekend.

Very few Startup Weekend companies last more than a few weeks after the event
ends - it's rare that they turn into a 'real company'. I (and many other
people) view it as an opportunity to meet new people, toss around ideas, work
on an interesting project for a weekend, and solve problems that you wouldn't
otherwise be exposed to.

> People come with ideas, volunteers work their asses off to make it happen,
> then the idea guy gets all that stuff for free as well as a monetary award
> for having had the best volunteers donate their code to him?

I've done numerous Startup Weekends, and the usual result is that winning
teams split the prizes. Team members can continue building it if they want to,
but usually teams just go their separate ways.

When you grow to a certain size, there are bound to be some unhappy stories. I
think Startup Weekend is an awesome event, although I can understand why it
wouldn't appeal to some people.

------
vijayr
Just curious - why can't the organizers of these startup weekends have some
kind of legal agreement to protect all parties, especially developers as they
seem to be the ones who get screwed most of the time?

~~~
bakhy
that's a good idea, but on second glance, it's none of their business. people
should value their own work, and not throw themselves at the first smooth-
talking jerk in the gamblers' hope of earning some hilariously unlikely
windfall in the future.

------
CamatHN
A handshake agreement (not written down) can definitely hold up in court so be
careful in not giving any claim you are owed through your claiming of money as
it could represent your giving up your potential equity as well.

Doesn't matter if he has an LLC, you may likely have claim if he was not clear
that you were not receiving equity (i.e. such as if you were coming in as a
contractor).

~~~
amatix
[http://www.backofanapkin.co.nz/](http://www.backofanapkin.co.nz/) is a
brilliant idea for this sort of pre-company-formation thing -- at a minimum it
forces you to spend a few minutes thinking about what happens if things don't
work out in a team/project/idea.

~~~
kevindeasis
thats a really nice tool to have. where do you find stuff like these?

~~~
amatix
Was launched at a local event
([http://gathergather.co.nz/](http://gathergather.co.nz/)), and popped up on
HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6904743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6904743)
\-- IIRC there was a US version someone released a bit later, but I can't find
it atm.

------
ambicapter
"“Hey, Billy”, I lead in, jokingly. “When they hand you the first place prize,
make sure you find a way to throw us all under the bus and take full credit.”"

Holy passive-agression.

~~~
doppelganger27
I think this is the part of the article that struck me the most odd. So when
Bobby implies that Billy is going to throw them under the bus, it's a joke,
but when Billy _responds_ to the joke with the line about coercing the
"fucking nerds," it's serious?

------
DiabloD3
Okay, so, as far as I can tell, if the team just quits on him, doesn't his
"company" just fall flat on its face because that guy that took over has no
concept on how to run a software development project?

~~~
pimentel
It "falls" but with good publicity because of the team. After that it's just a
matter of hiring new developers and profit on the SW team's work.

------
tankenmate
A very good question here is, who owns the copyright to the code? If the devs
weren't compensated then the devs should own the code.

~~~
troels
I would assume that - by default - all members of the team at that weekend
have an equal ownership. And not just of the code produced - of the concept as
a whole.

~~~
mediumdeviation
Ideas and concepts are not usually considered intellectual property, and
cannot receive protection or be assigned ownership.

Barring any agreement otherwise, the code's copyright belongs to the
individual developer who wrote it, though in the case of software projects
this may get a little weird when multiple developers write and overwrite each
other's code.

The following is speculation, because I've read up on the finer points of
copyright laws as applied to purely digital property, but by sharing the code
the developer has obviously gave the person he's sharing the code with
implicit permission to work and use that copy of that code, although, again
barring any prior agreement otherwise, he should also be able to rescind that
permission as he chooses.

~~~
tankenmate
There might be an implied right to use (but without a contract to specify
compensation a court might require Billy (et alia) to provide some
compensation), but if Billy was to re-license the code to a third party that
would almost certainly be a problem.

------
Bjorkbat
This is why I don't exactly hold Startup Weekend in high regard. I think it's
a good idea, and I think the people who organize these things are (mostly)
alright, but unfortunately they more often than not attract creeps looking for
some people to build them a free website for their shitty idea.

I still go, mostly because where I live (Albuquerque) we have such a small
tech community that I try to make little efforts to grow and support it, but I
never work in someone else's team, unless they're a developer like me, they
have a cool idea, and they're genuinely thoughtful.

But I have to agree with others in that the way Bobby handled it could have
gone better. Contracts aren't allowed at Startup Weekend and violate the
spirit of the event. If you want to protect yourself, don't give him the code.
If you did give him the code, relax, most Startup Weekend code is so hacky
that he'll have to start over. Just breathe, get over it, let this asshole
continue with his life. If he's successful and you resent that, you can
probably get away with competing against him with a better product. His tech
team probably consists of a bunch of college interns who only know Java.

I'm glad he's talking about this though, because this happens way too often at
these kinds of events, and more people need to know that despite the cool
marketing and the hype, these events can attract the worst. Don't avoid them
though, they can be fun, but you have to make them fun. Avoid the people who's
sleaziness gives you a bad vibe.

------
tdyen
The loser out of all of this is Startup Weekend to me. Seems like you would
need to sign on to percentages upfront and legal or if it goes well the shite
will hit the fan.

~~~
eggoa
Yes, speaking as someone without firsthand experience of this sort of event,
the "no contracts" rule sounds bizarre and reckless.

------
calgoo
Get all the other coders to agree and license all the code etc as BSD and let
anyone use it. Even better, start a parallel business with the software and
charge 10% of what the other asshole would charge. Destroy him and his
"partner"...

~~~
rasz_pl
not BSD, make it GPL#3

------
caseysoftware
I ran into this one back in June: [http://caseysoftware.com/blog/dont-attend-
a-hackathon](http://caseysoftware.com/blog/dont-attend-a-hackathon)

 _Avoid_ the "idea guy" at all costs.

------
sid-
Sounds pretty much like the startup weekend experience I had as well. I
pitched and helped built team and the site (am a developer) but the business
guys behavior just put me off so much that I walked away (he basically changed
my idea ...a pivot ?? and had the team build his one)...then they rode our
second place success and hired other devs and got something going again...I
dont rue them their business success but he should not have joined our team if
he wanted to build his idea ...I sometimes wonder if nice guys ever finish
first in business :( My experience on that weekend is one of the reasons I
dont go to startup weekends anymore...but it was a good lesson and learning
experience for me...not something I could pick up from a book

------
sundaeofshock
Hackathons just need to go away. I can't think of any other industry where
people give aways thousands of dollars of their own labor (over a weekend), on
the off chance they might win a negligible cash prize. Are there
law/medicine/MBA-a-thons? Of course not! Those folks have professional
conferences and networking events where they can meet new people and explore
new ideas. What they don't do is give their time away.

The only times I work without pay is when I'm working on my own projects or
for a non-profit. Everyone else pays for my time. I don't work for free. And
until the bulk of tech folks have the same attitude, tech folks will continue
to be exploited.

~~~
MatthewMcDonald
Counterpoint: I don't think most people at Startup Weekend attend _because_ of
the prizes. I've taken part in many events, and while I certainly tried to
win, the prizes have zero influence on my participation. I never go in with
the expectation of anything more than a fun weekend and new connections.

~~~
sundaeofshock
I definitely understand all that. Might point is that we can get all that
without giving away our time for free. The core of many hack-a-thons is that
we are asked to do a quick prototype and validate an idea. We should be paid
for that work!

There are plenty of meet-ups and networking events to make new connections, as
well as plenty of events where we can code and learn with like minded folks.

------
spitfire
I've been burnt by people like this too. It hurts, you think you've done
something wrong. You haven't, and I'm glad Bobby has shone some light on this
guy.

Everyone - and I mean EVERYONE should read Robert Hare's work on psychopaths.
"Without Conscience" is a good introduction.

There's a saying "be afraid when the pretty people show up.". They've shown up
in droves, the party is over.

NB: Also, Billy may own the company, But the contributors own their code and
contributions. They can and should control this.

------
raarts
I would be interested in a focus group or forum for engineers that got bitten
in a similar fashion, or that wants to exchange information on how to deal
with rats like this. Does that exist?

~~~
devopsproject
Does this really need its own forum? The point the author tried, and failed,
to make is that you only have value when you fight for it.

My brother comes to me several times a year with "ideas". He uses all the same
lines "I just need someone to build it" "you should be able to whip it up over
the weekend", etc.

Most of the ideas are crap, but he has had a few gems. I always ask for 51%
ownership and then explain to him that I am inviting him to be a part of the
product that I am building. He can leave with nothing, or i could do it myself
and retain 100%, or we could work together, or he can get someone else to do
it.

------
blacktar
Assholery all around, IMO.

Billy is an asshole for deceiving people and breaking the SW rules of no
preworked ideas allowed.

Bobby is an asshole for joining a SW with the wrong motivation and breaking
the SW rule of no pre-formed teams (and proceeding to whine about being
snubbed without any form of self-reflection in the process).

The SW organisers and the facilitator are assholes for breaking the clear SW
rule of no cash prizes allowed - ever.

------
darkstar999
The bullied becomes the bully. This article was clearly made to bully Billy.

------
slamus
Wow.. what a post ! Those startup bullies clearly seems like a new breed of
people engineers needs to avoid.

Actually, I also had a mixed experience after a Startup Weekend: I went to my
first Startup Weekend with hope of networking but it grew quickly in a great
opportunity to create my first app startup.

Here’s my story

Someone smart I didn’t know pitched a cool problem with an hint of a solution,
and ended up having me on this team. During the 72 hours streak I found the
name, created the logo/branding, made iPhone mockups and built UX/UI. The team
was very nice and thinking very hard , but was basically gathering around me
while I was doing the hard work making this app a reality.

We won the 2d place and 3 months in a French Incubator.

3 days later, the pitcher called me about continuing working on the app. Since
he had already a startup going, he promised me shares and a salary so I can
work on it alone in the incubator. I was thrilled ! Being paid to create a
startup, w/ shares, was the best option for me since I was married and had a
little boy.

Working at the incubator on an iPhone app was a blast: I learned a lot of
things, met great people, while building a great product from scratch.
Sometimes the “co-founder” came-by a few hours to show his face, give me
feedback, and reassure me on our first handshake deal.

After Two months I already built an iPhone beta, and was iterating on the
UI/UX & design for the app. Around this time, we decided to meet to talk more
seriously about the deal.

Here’s how it went

I spoke first, offering him 50/50 with no salary or less shares with a salary
to complete for the percentage. This deal was obviously better for him, since
he could have me work full-time on the project for free while he will be
working half-time on his other project.

He laughed at my face, and told me that I don’t know anything about business
by submitting a 50/50 deal…

He then told me that his potential investors (Which was his dad and his
previous boss btw) were potentially investing a few hundred K€, so I can trade
my salary for the shares, according to that totally fake number.

It made around 0,3% in total

I couldn’t believe he was doing that to me and really felt the pain of
betrayal. I know I took risks by giving my total confidence to a stranger, but
I was really feeling the bond between our minds, and I really thought he’ll be
generous by seeing how much I added to his idea.

About a week later I decided to take my cash and go my own way, seeing that I
couldn’t bear working for him under those terms, since I built the entire
product.

It was 18 Months ago.

In September, he released the v1.0 of the app (It was in beta for 6 months),
which is identical to the product I built almost on my own: branding, design,
UI/UX and features. It’s so similar I recognize my code through the buttons
animation! And seeing this old, made-in-a-rush design makes me think: I could
make this product so much better !

While I was away, he did an impressive PR work, and ended-up raising 800K$
which was quite hard to swallow for me, even though I don’t really mind and
run a good freelance business. Fortunately, his success is now bringing me
really interesting app projects, and I truly value the time spent at the
incubator.

I try very hard to get all the positive lessons from this period while pushing
back the hard feelings.

Because I’m no mean guy, I wish him the best.

I guess Karma will do the rest.

~~~
jazzyk
I am not a mean guy either, so sorry to be critical, but...

You are exactly the reason why people like Billy exist. They take advantage of
creative, perhaps brilliant people who are shockingly (shockingly, given their
intelligence) naive from a life/business point of view.

It may be too long of a wait for the Karma to catch up with them :-)

Please don't enable them.

~~~
ElComradio
Just remember what truly matters in a successful business venture: language
policing.

------
smalter
the ceo is the person who says, "i want to be ceo." no one else in the room
stepped up to do that.

that's why psychopaths win, but that's also why "nice" people get walked all
over.

~~~
vinceguidry
If strongman governance is the only viable option, then it was never getting
off the ground to begin with.

~~~
ambicapter
Its not 'strongman governance' its 'leadership'. Someone needs to step up.

~~~
vinceguidry
In this case, someone did, the strongman. Nobody was willing to accept his
leadership though. A rebel leader was born, then, in the fashion of these
sorts of leaders, immediately abdicated his responsibility by allowing the
would-be strongman to abscond with the group's efforts. Rebel leaders are
reactive rather than proactive.

This group was never getting off the ground. Leaders have to be ready to fight
for the survival of the group. Where there's a lack of true leadership,
strongmen fill the void.

------
peterwwillis
_" tl;dr: the developers rule in this realm."_

SUPER cringe-worthy. This is internet justice at it's most painful and
awkward.

------
andyidsinga
The "Tower of Babel" problem at events like startup weekend is an interesting
phenomenon to experience first hand.

I did a startup weekend once ..and came away thinking this:

\- better to have a small number of developers : ~2 , maybe 3 max. 1 is
probably just fine for the weekend.

\- better to have a smaller number of people on the whole team - maybe 3-4
max. The more they can tee up potential customers the better.

EDIT: the nuance here is around the numbers of people. In a normal startup
situation its harder to get bigger than 2-3 people at the very beginning. But
at a startup weekend like event if you have a charismatic team lead all of a
sudden you'll have 8 or 10 people (this was possible back when I attended SW).
So, the goal here is, if you're the team lead, resist collecting a large
number of people, and if you a developer/doer, resist joining a team with a
large number of people.

------
pellmellism
I had hired Bobby on Codementor.io to quick solve a problem one weekend...paid
~$400 for some code which didnt do what it needed to. I read the article as I
read most articles on hacker news and half way through I realized that Bobby
was the same tool bag I ran into in the past. I logged back in and re-read my
conversation with him and it was shockingly similar...to be clear, I dont
think Billy is right, but Bobby is a tool. I thought I was done wasting my
time reading his "im never wrong" opinionated excuses and garbage. You know
who winners are bobby? Winners are people too busy winning to sit around
crafting bullshit and excuses. Shut up and do something if your so special.
Ive seen weekend code from you - take the 222 and shhh, you made out on that
deal.

~~~
osullivj
I'm not familiar with the epithet 'toolbag'. I take you're not likening Bobby
to a bag of tools. In this context, is toolbag a metaphor for scrotal sac?

~~~
monknomo
A tool is an insult for a person who is a jerk with a high opinion of
themselves. Appending bag to tool is an enhancer to the original insult, like
douche vs douchebag.

You also get things like jerkbag or dirtbag or dickbag. I think I've seen
people write "so and so is a bag," so the exact nature of the insult is
evolving.

Bag is evocative of scrotum, but I don't think it originally evolved that way.
Although scrotebag is a pretty good insult

~~~
osullivj
Thanks for explaining!

------
johnymontana
This experience really highlights one of the major misconceptions of Startup
Weekend events. It is really an exercise in building a startup in 54 hours.
You learn how to work with a team, validate an idea, the devs hopefully learn
some business stuff and the business people hopefully learn some dev stuff.
You build a prototype and pitch to the judges as if you were pitching to
investors. But that's all it is - an exercise meant to improve your skills,
meet new people and improve the startup community in your area. I think it is
simply unrealistic to expect an actual startup to come out of the weekend.
Validate an idea and meet new people, yes, but a startup is much more than
that.

------
beilabs
My favourite startup weekend was where we had to sell the product within 4
weeks of the competition finishing.

Highest selling product was the winner, went a long way to teaching me that
you can produce code that is valuable to a buyer in a short space of time.

------
qjighap
Having trouble with the timing on this one.

From the article: "These days Billy can still be found pitching our work at
empty meeting rooms around the community"

Screenshots seem to be from the last few days

Did this happen last year? My apologies for the internet detective

~~~
irl_zebra
I wondered the same thing after seeing a comment on here that linked to the
company and to a news article indicating the event happened this past weekend.
I got from the original submission that this was a past thing and the "happy
ending" was that Billy failed. But that appears to not be the case as the
events were so recent.

~~~
carrja99
The "busy with morning meetings" Billy referred to in his email was him
speaking about winning startup weekend at a local entrepreneur group, sans his
team.

I think the camera shot is poor though, it probably wasn't that empty. I
believe that it was found from twitter or instagram.

------
bigtunacan
Great article; why wasn't the site taken offline though? If the team wrote the
code I'm making the assumption they did the deployment and have the keys to
the kingdom to yank the rug from off the floor.

------
owly
As soon as Billy made the "gay shit" comment you should have immediately
deleted all of your work and quit. I've been in enough of these situations to
know the best course of action is to walk away.

------
jml2061
24 years as a cook and chef, greasy spoon and top 10 world ranked level, here.
Also owner of two successful restaurants. Billy's idea is neither new nor very
much in demand. Large chain "restaurants" have their own, HR cobbled,
solutions, smaller restaurants don't function that way, no matter how high or
low on the fame ladder they are.

Investing a weekend, maybe, but this won't sell. Looks to me the software
talent in this equation made the best move by taking their $222 (or licensing
the code to Billy) and moving on.

------
todd3834
I can't relate with the author. It seems like most of the software engineers
that I work with are not and were not nerds. Maybe some of them were or are
but I don't see a connection between nerd and software engineering. Maybe I'm
just too much of a nerd myself that I can't see the obvious truth. I've worked
at several companies as a senior software engineer from startups to Apple
through my career and I never noticed that there were a lot a nerds. I think
this is a false stereotype of our industry.

------
roneesh
As much as I want to identify with the writer of this, it's hard to. A
seasoned dev, especially in startups should know that a Startup Weekend can be
amateur hour when it comes to people knowing the rules and norms of business.
There are many ways to do startup weekend right, but being the dev for someone
else's vision is almost certainly one of the wrong ways to handle that
weekend, it just breeds too many resentments.

The author is right, the devs have the power now, so why did they cede it?

------
JoeAltmaier
Who owns the code? I think it comes down to, who has the github password. Not
a good idea to let the business guy run off with all the assets, and no firm
deal.

~~~
butwhy
s/owns/has a copy of/g

------
danso
It's a nice gesture but a little silly for OP to redact Billy's name and
details when the project can be found by googling "Bobby Boyd startup
weekend". It's the second result after the OP, and the redactions probably
won't protect him against a libel suit. And this thing happened only 3 days
ago? Probably too short of time to cool down and think rationally before
burning the bridges.

------
joesmo
Don't take the prize and just release the code as open source and call it a
day. That way, there's no way this asshole can claim work-for-hire (probably
couldn't anyway, but just to make sure) and at least he will no longer have
anything proprietary. Or if you really feel like it, sue him if he actually
uses the software, but it's likely not worth the additional time and money
investment.

------
njharman
> Manhattan Project was a pretty valuable idea

Not really. Both the German and Japanese at the time had same idea. They
failed to execute.

------
bsaul
The moral of this story to me is that organizers should really be a lot more
involved with the financial / legal aspects of a hackathon. "Rules" are not
enough, and i think participants should agree beforehand to modalities with
which code property and companies shares should be dealt with in various
outcomes.

------
dharma1
There's gotta be the beginnings of a trashy reality TV show in here somewhere.

The thing I recognized from this though is that hackathon based startups can
feel awkward, you have 6 people in the team, all supposedly equal splits in
case you take the product forward but completely unbalanced contributions..
can go sour quite easily.

------
markbnj
Can't add much to this discussion given all the excellent comments already
posted. I've never done a "hackathon," and while I would not be surprised to
see a good, working company come out of one, I do think the outcome presented
in this tale is as likely as any other, and perhaps more so.

------
morgante
It looks like the startup is up and running (presumably, with the unlicensed
code): [http://www.staffedup.com/](http://www.staffedup.com/)

At this point, Bobby & co. should just sit back and let Billy try to make it
into a success. Then sue him for using their code.

------
davidw
I did a startup weekend thing a few years back. I thought the networking bit
of it was fun, but actually working on the project was not that great, and
there are some echoes of this: these guys decided to use PHP as a lowest
common denominator. Hacking on PHP all weekend long is not my idea of fun.

------
goodgoblin
If at all possible don't do a startup with people you don't really like.

My advice to Bobby would be to stay connected with the developers he bonded
with over the event and see if there is another idea they could work together
on -- at least then the weekend isn't a waste of time.

------
danvoell
This is great stuff, thanks for sharing. I wonder how often this happens and
to this level. I am guessing it is more often than people realize. The
expectations going into these types of events often vary greatly.

------
peignoir
Such a great post, thx for writing it, you inspired me to write about how to
stop the startup Bullshit... Startup Weekend has always been neutral and we
should remind our community why / what it really mean.

@peignoir

------
andyana
Stop working for startups like this. Either the person with the idea should
learn to help with development, or they should pay you market value. The whole
startup culture is starting to make me cringe.

------
dunk010
I'm sure this guy sneers at people who fall for Nigerian Prince emails, but he
basically did the same thing. He allowed his own greed to cloud his judgement.

------
jmartens
The way Billy has acted is totally out of alignment with Startup Weekend, its
rules and purpose.

Same with prize money, it never should have been allowed according to Startup
Weekend rules and guidelines.

------
uxcn
Steve Ballmer was just a misunderstood visionary.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE)

------
rcurry
So I spent the last ten minutes crafting a really long post about this, but
then I realized I could refactor it into the following statement:

If it isn't in writing, it isn't happening.

------
yitchelle
I haven't participate in any startup weekends / hackathons etc, but these
descriptions sound very shady with sharks circling around. Is this really the
true picture?

------
sgarg1
How can one go about safeguarding his interest in such events?

------
dba7dba
Dang, after all that work and sacrifice (missing little bro's birthday) and
you won something you canNOT even wipe down your floor with.

------
ai_ja_nai
Unless you signed anything, you have full ownership of the code. Demand the
destruction of any working code to Billy or sue him

------
jcwilde
This would be an awesome wrinkle in the story if the silent partner, "Jeremy
P", turned out to be Jeremy Piven.

------
andyidsinga
the point Billy and Bobby argue about WRT starting the venture ahead of SW is
an interesting one.

When I went to SW a few years ago it was very obvious that many of the
ventures coming in already had significant work done ..and we certainly not
starting from the ground up over the weekend.

------
_superposition_
I have nothing useful to add to the conversation. I just want to express my
support for the author and my disdain for Billy.

------
snowy
TLDR?

~~~
mcherm
TLDR: Some other developers and I went to a hackathon, met an 'idea guy'
there, and won first place. Afterward, he claimed that he and a friend who
wasn't there owned "the startup". We then proceeded to write obnoxious emails
to each other.

