
This Man Built a $3M Business a Year After Four Years in Prison - rbobby
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hollieslade/2014/08/21/how-this-man-built-a-3m-business-a-year-on-from-four-years-in-prison/
======
johnward
Someone is saying this code was stolen:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227225](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227225)

~~~
yardie
If that is the case it should be easy enough to prove in court. Or is it going
to be more of the early Facebook, Twitter, Youtube days. Where everyone that
played a bit part all of the sudden had great big titles in the founding of
the companies.

I'm not sure what what happened but it could also be equally said this guy's
code wasn't any good, wasn't used, and so the founders didn't want to pay for
it. And the Paypal resolution dispute seems to agree. Something was exchanged
but not everyone was happy with what was received.

~~~
skinnymuch
Were there a number of people saying they did a lot for Twitter? In my opinion
from what I've read, Noah Glass, one of the co-founders, really did get
screwed over and seemed to have done a lot with his short time at Twitter.

~~~
yardie
I was thinking more of the Winklevii. Basically, people that play a small role
early on then leave (or jettisoned) only to come back claiming they were the
idea/backbone/major contributor.

I totally agree Glass got screwed.

Many years ago I wrote the code for an online store. I outsourced the payment
processing and photo upload functions. If the store somehow managed to grow to
Amazon size who knows what those 2 developers would say. To me, they played a
very small, but essential, role.

~~~
skinnymuch
I see. Did you pay the outsourced coders fairly? I'm sure they would say
something but to me that is different from the Winklevii. I do think because
FB was able to explode so much and Zuckerberg did mislead them a bit, them
receiving what they did, $60M in stock (though now it would be much higher)
and some cash seems fair. Obviously they barely did anything for FB and they
wouldn't have likely made any big website on their own. But because of
Zuckerberg's actions and because FB did become as big as it did, I find what
they ended up getting to be fair. Do you not think so?

But hah originally I thought you were including Noah Glass in your assessment
and was either going to inquire about why because his story is so incredibly
sad to me.

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diasks2
I think this shows one reason it can benefit young people to join a company in
the industry they are targeting before jumping into startup life. One of the
best/easiest ways to find pain points is to be knee deep in the industry.
Obviously in this specific case I am not recommending going to prison, but
hopefully you get the point.

~~~
k__
Problem is, you can start a start-up easier than joining a company.

~~~
bcohen5055
Easier is relative here. If you have means to bootstrap or access to capital
then yes it is but that's not always the case. Furthermore if you don't have
any business connections relationships in the business getting into many
industries (outside of software) can be quite the challenge.

~~~
k__
You're right, but that comes later.

~~~
chc
In my experience, the need to eat comes pretty much constantly.

------
song
I don't really understand the logic behind preventing inmates from accessing
internet. It seems to me that if the aim of prison is rehabilitate inmates and
reduce crime then giving them access to internet would be beneficial.

I can understand why some inmates should not have access to internet to
prevent them from directing their activities outside of prison but I'm sure
that those are a small minority.

~~~
draugadrotten
> I can understand why some inmates should not have access to internet to
> prevent them from directing their activities outside of prison but I'm sure
> that those are a small minority.

First, you underestimate how bad it is in prison.

Second, giving internet access some some inmates would expose them to threats
and blackmail from their less rehabilitated counterparts. "Send this
threatening email to my enemy, or you'll drop the soap." And it would expose
them to threats from the outside: "I know you're in prison with my enemy. Kill
him, or your daughter will suffer."

Third, you underestimate how bad it is in prison.

The rehabilitation is a noble goal but what these guys needs are
psychologists, drug therapy and social workers, not internet addiction.

~~~
icebraining
Inmates can already make (and receive?) phone calls and letters, not to
mention visits. I fail to see how are those situations not already possible,
even without Internet access. It's not like we can't monitor online
conversations.

~~~
draugadrotten
The situation may not be perfect today, but communication to/from prisons are
heavily guarded to prevent these situations and others.

Inmates in most countries can make phone calls only to phone numbers which
have been approved, usually only family. You can't make random phone calls.
All phone calls are monitored and recorded to prevent abuse. You can't call an
inmate afaik, that would be a very low security facility, which I am not aware
of.

Visitors are only by request and undergo security checks before, during and
after visits. And yes, visitors are a huge security issue in prisons, but if
you deny all visitors to prisoners, you're in Guantanamo, not a normal prison
anymore. There are different levels of security in prisons.

Internet access is much harder to control. Encryption is, as you as a HN
reader know, very easy to do on a computer, but hard using your voice. Hiding
information on a computer is easy, but very hard on a voice phone. There have
been prisons in the world that allowed internet access to inmates and there
are problems with that, much as with visitors or phone calls. It's a balancing
act to weigh those problems to the benefits. You just have to go into the
discussion with open eyes about the problems that internet access would bring.
Imagine a pedophile convicted for sexually harassing children online, and
giving him/her internet access in prison. What an outrage. Someone in a low
sec jail for DUI could be given internet access, no problems. It happends,
I've even seen a CEO run his company from within the jail. He was given
supervised internet access to his companys financial system once a month, one
guard watching pover his shoulder at all times. Not a very scalable solution
though.

It all depends, doesn't it.

~~~
vinceguidry
> The situation may not be perfect today, but communication to/from prisons
> are heavily guarded to prevent these situations and others.

That's pretty funny. Contraband cell phones are ridiculously common in prison.
I had a buddy of mine in prison, was there for four years. At one point he
started calling me from jail, from a contraband phone.

He called me often enough and we chatted long enough on these calls that I got
the feeling that there wasn't any sort of real scarcity when it comes to
communications in prison.

The phones had Internet access, he would update his Facebook page from prison.
At one point he even asked me for money so that he could buy his own
contraband cell phone. (I said no)

------
ck2
US is going to be reduced to a few industries in the next decade.

Law enforcement, prison system, healthcare.

Everything else will be imported.

~~~
pessimizer
Don't forget hair, nails, makeup, massage, personal training, personal
stylists, personal assistants, interior design, restaurants, drivers, and
prostitution.

~~~
jjsz
So a modern Dave and Busters that incorporates the above and functions as a
pseudo daycare.

------
ssanders82
Just noticed at the bottom of forbes.com, ostensibly one of the gold-standard
names in personal finance, I see 6 "promoted stories" \- all of which violate
facebook's recent click-baiting standards:
[http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/08/news-feed-fyi-click-
bait...](http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/08/news-feed-fyi-click-baiting/)

Interesting article though. Good for him.

------
serge2k
> When you take away that seven percent or so that did something violent

Is that accurate?

~~~
nostrademons
Wikipedia [1] suggests that it's accurate as a _percentage of people who go to
prison_ , but not as a _percentage of people who are in prison_. The
discrepancy is because violent offenders have dramatically longer sentences.
If one violent offender gets locked up for 50 years and then 50 consecutive
drug offenders get locked up for 1 year each, then the prison population is
50% violent criminals, but the percentage of criminals sentenced to prison is
98% non-violent.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#Char...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#Characteristics_of_offenders)

------
cool-RR
And it looks like he's going right back in.

~~~
kyllo
If he did steal the code, and the developer who wrote it sues, the IP suit is
going to be civil, not criminal. He won't do jail time for that.

~~~
jgrowl
Unless it somehow constitutes violation of parole?

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jonemo
I clicked the baity headline so you don't have to:

The company provides services that make it easier to communicate with inmates,
including "The easiest way to send printed photos to your inmate directly from
your computer or mobile phone!"

[https://www.fotopigeon.com/](https://www.fotopigeon.com/)

[https://www.telepigeon.com/](https://www.telepigeon.com/)

[http://pigeon.ly/](http://pigeon.ly/)

~~~
joelrunyon
I thought it was a compelling headline. Just because it's a good headline -
doesn't mean it's "baity" \- I think the article was well represented by the
headline. If you want to do a TLDR - that's great, but you completely omit the
full story the author put into the work.

~~~
kinleyd
I agree with you. I think the actual article lived up to the HN link title.
I'm impressed by Frederick Hutson - he was sharp to the opportunities that he
saw even in prison. Lesser mortals like myself would have been too devastated
to even think straight, much less identify such an opportunity.

~~~
bshimmin
He went to prison for routing marijuana through his business. I think if
you're willing to risk doing something like that, you're probably not going to
be "too devastated" if you end up in prison - or, at least, surely you're not
going to be too surprised.

~~~
01Michael10
Your theory is one would not be devastated going to prison? I think most
people don't plan on being caught. Going to prison is a total upheaval in
one's life and the fact they may deserve it or should not be surprised is
irrelevant.

Now, if this was like his third trip to prison then you would have a point...

