I had a similar story. At 16, a summer friend came to me. He told me that he knew a company that needed a web app.
He got a 5500$ contract. It was so much for us, just high-schoolers.
We didn't know how to do a web app. I knew a bit of Python, him a bit of Javascript.
So a month during, we learned how to and built the app they asked with Django. I never learned so quickly!
After a month, we shipped the app. They had a lot of users (900+), so our app that worked well with a database of two people failed miserably.
We spent nights fixing its problems.
It used an external API that we had rate limiting problems with. I implemented a cache using Postgresql.
Then, they started to ask us for more features that weren't in the original contract. They said that if we wanted to get paid, we had to do them.
Eventually, we realized they weren't going to pay for us. We asked them to pay us, and they said yes. Then they said no, contact our lawyers. Their lawyers told us they wanted to engage charges because we didn't do the job well. They were still using our website without paying us! We contacted a lawyer and quickly realized that because of the legal fees (2500$ upfront + 500$/hour), it wasn't worth it to seek justice.
We were completely fucked.
Then, I remembered they used Heroku, which was based in the US and therefore applied the DMCA laws.
We sent them an email explaining the situation and, in under 48H, they took the website down. I will always remember that morning when my friend woke me up to show me their site down.
As we did the deployment, they took a week to re-deploy our app at a server under French jurisdiction (that we could never have taken down).
Then, their whole company ran out of business as customers were leaving and asking refunds because of the lousy service. They laid off everyone, but our app is still freely accessible at https://crypto-analyse.com.
This experience taught us many lessons:
- Never work for something that you're not paid for unless you're doing charity or working for yourself.
- Contracts are no guarantee
- They made a lot of money with our app. We could have made a lot more by just selling it ourselves.
And that's what we did! We just shipped our new app (it's an app to automate crypto trading with a conditions editor), https://kaktana.com
We now make more money than we had thought before, all of that using the experience we gained from that shitty deal.
We didn't know how to do a web app. I knew a bit of Python, him a bit of Javascript. So a month during, we learned how to and built the app they asked with Django. I never learned so quickly!
After a month, we shipped the app. They had a lot of users (900+), so our app that worked well with a database of two people failed miserably.
We spent nights fixing its problems. It used an external API that we had rate limiting problems with. I implemented a cache using Postgresql.
Then, they started to ask us for more features that weren't in the original contract. They said that if we wanted to get paid, we had to do them.
Eventually, we realized they weren't going to pay for us. We asked them to pay us, and they said yes. Then they said no, contact our lawyers. Their lawyers told us they wanted to engage charges because we didn't do the job well. They were still using our website without paying us! We contacted a lawyer and quickly realized that because of the legal fees (2500$ upfront + 500$/hour), it wasn't worth it to seek justice.
We were completely fucked.
Then, I remembered they used Heroku, which was based in the US and therefore applied the DMCA laws. We sent them an email explaining the situation and, in under 48H, they took the website down. I will always remember that morning when my friend woke me up to show me their site down.
As we did the deployment, they took a week to re-deploy our app at a server under French jurisdiction (that we could never have taken down).
Then, their whole company ran out of business as customers were leaving and asking refunds because of the lousy service. They laid off everyone, but our app is still freely accessible at https://crypto-analyse.com.
This experience taught us many lessons: - Never work for something that you're not paid for unless you're doing charity or working for yourself. - Contracts are no guarantee - They made a lot of money with our app. We could have made a lot more by just selling it ourselves.
And that's what we did! We just shipped our new app (it's an app to automate crypto trading with a conditions editor), https://kaktana.com
We now make more money than we had thought before, all of that using the experience we gained from that shitty deal.
“The phoenix must burn to emerge.” - Janet Fitch