Thread 33617730

Long story short a "friend" (more so former friend) is refusing to compensate me and several other individuals for help on a project.

She owes everyone involved several thousand dollars each and is financially well off enough that she could easily solve this issue and be done with it, but has continually refused to.

Due to the fact that we were rather brain-dead morons at the time, we do not have enough of a paper trail to actually drag her to court or try and use the legal system against her (this would be complicated for other reasons as well).

Alternatively, she could willingly change her mind and assist us with the rest of the work as a different means of paying us back.

If you want more details, I'll be happy to provide them, however it is getting rather late so I should probably head to bed soon.

TLDR: Startups are shit, especially when you're a group of idiots.

>>33617730 (OP)
small claims court

>>33617735
Thats nice but several of the individuals involved live in different countries. By the time we took care of all of that shit we'd probably be losing money. What I personally really want is the individual to get her shit together and do what she said she'd do, IE lead the project that she herself fucking came up with.

>>33617730 (OP)
Well you can *still* create a paper trail though. Write her an email or something asking about confirmation on the amounts of debts, list it up and get some sort of confirmation.

>>33617742
I probably have some evidence of that somewhere, however despite the fact that she was the originator of the project she didnt have any involvement in the actual estimated payments and other financial matters. The individual(s) who were funding her project were responsible for allotting salaries, however all of the decisions were made by the primary funder who surprise surprise is dead. so that helps...

Because it is her project, we are either hoping for one of two outcomes: she pays us the back pay she has not paid us, or she gets her ass in gear and actually leads the project like she has some skin in the game. I personally would prefer the 2nd option, however it would be an uphill battle as most of our funding came from a singular very well off and now deceased individual.

>>33617756
Oof, that's tricky.
How about a "shareholder meeting"?
Make everyone involved together and do an internal audit - find the funds and the stuff worth money, figure out who "owns" how much of the enterprise. (Legally speaking you might own the percentage of money invested, but it's probably better to steer clear of the legal approach for now.)
I think also a central question is: If someone died, who inherits the money? Is it really the chick? Because if it's not, then you have to figure out whose money that is, or at least make sure you're not implicated in "basically theft".

Once you know who owns what, (do not do the accounting for free btw) and how much, you can have a shareholder vote on what should happen next. Worst case everyone votes "give me back my money" and you may have to go to court, but at least you know what you could be asking for back.

>>33617778
>How about a "shareholder meeting"?

This is not really feasible at the moment due to the death of the primary funder and that at least one individual is no longer on speaking terms with most individuals involved.

There were essentially 2 groups: My group and her group. about 2/3rds of the individuals involved in the project were only there because of her, and the rest were more or less there because I thought they would be good fits. I have no real experience in this field and to be quite honest I was only on the team because I'm good at making connections and had/have wealthy friends. When she backed out of the project, the entire software development team packed up and left as well as our primary funder which resulted in our secondary funders leaving as well.

Ironically, the individual who did inherit the money was on our team, however she burned all reasonable bridges between us and everyone else, including the project lead. That money is not recoverable unless you find a meth of turning meth back into dollars legally.

>>33617822
>I have no real experience in this field and to be quite honest I was only on the team because I'm good at making connections and had/have wealthy friends.
The painful truth you came here to be told is that you got scammed. You are now left holding the bag. It will only get worse until you disengage. Take this loss as a lesson and move on wiser or languish here and fight to get back what you have no legal standing to get back.

>>33617831
Luckily the only thing that I lost was primarily time, it could have been a lot worse.

>>33617822
It's hard to diagnose from afar, and probably not solvable without knowing the details, like "who cares about the money and how much?" and so on.
Generally speaking, investors have rights about their investment, so if you or someone else cares enough about his share, you or they should fight for what's theirs.
In particular since relations have soured it does not sound like the enterprise can be sustainable one, which sounds to me like it's a good time to cut your losses and move on, but again: It depends so much on the details.

>>33617856
if this thread is still up when I get up I may provide more details. thank you for the advice.

>>33617730 (OP)
>lending large sums of money to friends
congrats OP you discovered how to ruin friendships, you fucked up big time. NEVER do that shit again, yes you lost that friend, likely he wont pay the only way to make him pay is to lawyer up and put him on sue or somehting.

unless literally you gave that money outta pocket in cash and all that. idk talk it with your lawyer, might be worth it to get paid back, but yes that friend is gone. Shoulda never i dont care how good he was with you before, but shoulda never given that amount of money. with homies at most you give idk 500 bucks when hyper generous. usually 100 bucks, 50 bucks, etc.

1k and above? fuck no. Thats almost on ruining friendship dynamic amounts. 10k? 20k? its fucking over.

>>33617738
>it was on a woman
oh boy, so you simped this is even worse. yeah man likely you aint getting paid back. If there is a way to force it to happen, do so, you already lost that "friend" anyway. Its always so foolish to lend big amounts of money, no exceptions.

>>33617730 (OP)
Small claims court. Very informal, no lawyers, common sense judgments more than letter-of-the-law. And maybe just the threat will get him to pay

>>33617905
I only lent my time and energy into the project. I didnt lend her any money, and it was not directly to her, it was to the project we were working on. I repeat, I didnt give her money, all of our funding came from private individuals, not including myself.

>>33618650
I doubt small claims court would be able to make an individual who lives in a different country pay several individuals thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. Granted I dont know the legal system very well but I'm very sure that over a certain dollar amount requires a different court.