Hacker News Reader

Comment by y-curious | Hacker News Reader

What is the cost for doing this, out of curiosity? If OP only earns a trickle of revenue from their site, it probably isn’t even worth the money (?)

View on HN

Most state bar associations have a free consultation line that will refer you to a reputable lawyer to start with and do basic consultation on where your issue should go and how much it will be. If I had to guess, getting advice is probably $100 and having a lawyer send a letter is $250-500.

IP lawyers tend to be at the more expensive end, typical billing rate in US of $500/hr last I looked. But yes, being able to do a letter quickly is probable.

He earns 7 figs a month from it iirc, was featured many times on HN as a successful indie hacker.

If that’s true, he doesn’t need free legal advice from us.

True, but then again, the post is titled “Tell HN”, not “Ask HN”. Maybe it’s just a case of the poster trying to raise awareness.

... they're just trying to get the attention of someone at GH that can do anything OR create bad press that they then have to deal with. But pressuring them on HN to act about their sub-par anything is.. arduous, given their.. tolerance.

>He earns 7 figs a month from it iirc,

Less than 7 figures (~1 million) per year -- not per month -- based on previous comment from 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26769141

A later 2023 interview updated it to ~$200k/month (~2.4 million/year) : https://web.archive.org/web/20240606073354/https://saastrapp...

Still enough to hire a lawyer and at least do a few consultation sessions. That's a necessary business expense.

(I'd just quit my job if I had an income like this.)

That comment was over 5 years ago. That's a long time, and from estimates he has millions of users now. Definitely making big money.

A lot of lawyers will give a free consultation, and in my experience (not for IP) they will give decent expert advice for free. No harm calling them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com