bootstrapper101

Even if you assume everything I said about Peter at face value, in the end it is just an anecdote. I know quite a few people who had a great experience with him. So make your own judgement call!

In my immigration journey, I worked with 8 different law firms for various applications, including big ones like Berry Appleman, Fragomen. So I have good experience dealing with lawyers across the spectrum.

If you have a straight forward case, almost any competent lawyer can do a good job. Maybe even Peter might work out for you. For a simple case, I would recommend working with a well recommended local lawyer. Because there are quite a few filings which need wet signature. It will logistically save you time, money and headache of not needing to Fedex things again and again.

If you have a complicated case, I would stay away from solo practitioners and instead choose a mid size firm.

A good place to start looking for good firms is US News national ranking for Immigration lawyers: https://bestlawfirms.usnews.com/search.aspx?practice_area_id...

Out of all the firms that I worked with, I liked Wolfsdorf Rosenthal LLP (https://wolfsdorf.com/) best. They are also Tier 1 in US News ranking. Though they have grown in size since I worked with them.

Talk to multiple firms, do your own due diligence. If someone isn't responding well and doesn't appreciate your business, while you are evaluating firms, it will be much worse after you have signed up!

Most people on this forum are asking about potentially EB-1, O1, E2, Entrepreneurship parole etc. These applications can get very complicated.

If it was a simple H1 application I think most solo practitioners would be fine.

I stand by my comment that you are better off with a mid size (4-10 lawyers) firm for more complicated cases.

Bigger firms are too bureaucratic and they want to make money with bulk H1 and L1 from bigger corps.

Single lawyer setups don't have strong processes and enough variety of expertise. Given that they are solo practitioners, there will be less checks and balances if the sole owner is giving bad or illegal advice.

In a 4-5 lawyer setup, everyone's skin is in the game. They are less likely to sell you snake oil.

In my case money was not an issue. Unfortunately I ended up choosing Peter because of YC's credibility ( he said that he is a YC advisor and their sole recommendation for immigration lawyers).

Many people here might wrongly believe that Peter is somehow a part of YC. So felt it might be a good idea to post my experience here!

I agree that this story is one sided. If I wanted a closure with Peter, it would be in some kind of legal setting. But I have moved on.

I just want to use this opportunity to let fellow entrepreneurs realize the importance of picking the right immigration legal help and to not letting things get messed up on the government front

Many people on this thread are thinking of getting some kind of immigration status in US but either are outside US or are within US on H1/L1.

In hindsight I wish I had never applied for a US Green Card. My immigration situation has complications largely because Peter's bad advice.

The worst part was when he stopped responding as soon as he realized that he has screwed up my situation beyond repair. I was in a particular vulnerable situation on the personal front at that time, so it made it even worse.

If you look at my past threads, I am in a much better situation now. As I said, my sole reason of these posts is to help others not get into a bad situation like I did.

Do I want others to benefit from my experience? Yes

Do I want to help fellow entrepreneurs avoid negative immigration consequences? Yes

Do I want Peter to lose his law license or get sanctioned? No. Even though I have specific proof which could get him at least sanctioned.

Do I care whether more or less business goes to Peter? Also no

His actions turned my life upside down. It took me years to fix things. Abandoning me after rejection was worse. He talked to me the day before rejection in a very positive discussion. After the rejection he didn't reply to any email nor returned any call. His paralegal kept responding to me.

I am not trying to be vindictive here.

I am just trying to help fellow entrepreneurs. I went with Peter based on his AMA. It ended up being a huge mistake in my case. Hope others can use my experience as a data point to do further due diligence!

Well, sole reason Peter is doing this is to get more business.

My post has two parts. First part was tips related to choosing a firm and knowing what is at stake if things go wrong.

Second part specifically about my experience with Peter. It's an anecdote on internet. Take it for what you might.

I agree that I started the name calling for Peter which was the best characterization of my personal experience with him. You name called me where you had no idea about what really happened with me and how Peter actions completely turned my life upside down. Might be good to reflect on your own actions!

Peter does a thread here every few months. So I want to share a cautionary tale about Immigration lawyers in general and Peter in particular.

I had extensive immigration experience in US, where I did many filings. Worked with many different immigration lawyers.

In that end with your immigration you are dealing less with the law aspects and more with the paperwork filling which is more clerical work.

Things that I realized:

There are three types of lawyers:

1. With big firms like Berry Appleman, Fragomen etc. Very conservative in their opinion. Will not be responsive. Have good portals to enter information to help with your application.

2. Single lawyer operation like Peter Roberts: Very aggressive. Will give advice not really inline with the law. Very disorganized so you will spend a lot of time filling documents. Will make many mistakes.

3. 4-5 lawyer firms: These are the best in my opinion. They will pay more attention, have more experience and have decent process.

Issues with immigration filings:

When things are clear and you keep getting approved - things are great.

However as soon as things get complicated and you get rejections - now it will have negative impact not only on your future filings in US but also other countries. Many countries ask in their immigration application if you ever get rejected in any Visa application. Five Eye countries share all the non immigration paperwork with each other.

Issues with Peter:

He was a mix of Snake oil salesman and Fly by night operator.

He would consistently give advice which was very hackish. That works when you are trying out ideas for your business, but can have major consequences when you are dealing with the government. His advice was not in the letter and spirit of the law. He completely messed up my otherwise stellar immigration situation. I later checked his advice with multiple immigration lawyers and every single one of them said that Peter was wrong!

But the worst thing was that as soon as my application was rejected, he stopped all communications with me. He wouldn't reply to my email and stopped returning my calls. I had to find some other lawyer to clear the mess. It hurt a lot more, because I was in a very vulnerable situation in my personal life and Peter knew that!

I also know others who have bad experience with him. People probably don't speak out due to fear and not wanting to rock the boat!

My advice to all founders: Be careful when you deal with immigration filings. Find someone competent and professional!

I think you are a bit all over the place. I would suggest a few things:

Go through Naval's podcast "How to get rich". Listen it once a month for 4 months. Make notes and see how his suggestions apply to you. Focus on the things that you disagree with and understand why do you disagree with them.

Now on to my feedback:

You are worrying too much about big competitors getting you out of business or idea already launched. Unless your product has a very small market, there is always opportunities for new players. Looks at the instant messaging space over the time we have had IRC, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Google Chat, Skype, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Slack and there will be a lot more.

If an idea doesn't work out, you don't lose 2 years. You would have learnt a lot through this time. You are investing in your learning and capabilities.

Think of startup as a series of sprints. You sprint, strategize, sprint, strategize.

So my high level suggestion would be:

Start building what you want to build right now. Don't wait.

Don't think about doing startup in binary terms. Figure out which product you want to build next and try to find whatever time to make progress on it. During this phase if you have to sort out personal things do that. If you need to take a job to support finances do it. These are things that you have to take care of along the way. There will always be news stuff when you have taken care of the personal and finance part. Don't lose focus on your startup and keep chugging along.

If you get a job, make sure you don't use company hardware to build it. Make sure that there are no clauses which make products developed on your personal time as company property.

It is a digital product.

I don't live in US.

We do have outsourced customer service. But still I have to be aware of what the customers are complaining about. In some cases people are filing frivolous complaints to government agencies which you have to respond to. With Saas, I would go after the bad actors. With consumers the number of bad actors is endless.

No worries.

Glad that we could figure this out like reasonable adults.

I pitched my ideas just twice and got some funding for them.

However either my approach was wrong or I wasn't working with the right people. I felt that funding was too big of a waste of time. Without traction, everything I did was being second guessed. And too much time was being wasted pitching.

I haven't raised any money for 20+ of my ideas including the current one. But I can imagine it would be easier for me to raise money on better terms in future!

I use the nanny vs parent analogy for involvement with a product.

When you are working for someone else, you are a nanny. The product isn't your baby. Be careful how much you get invested. If you get sentimental and attached you will end up hurting yourself.

If you own your company, it's like being the parent. You have sole responsibility but except government no one else can interfere.

VC funded business can be like a wild ride. You may start as a parent, but you will eventually end up as a nanny. In some rare cases you can have majority voting rights till the end. Only famous case for that I know is Facebook.

As I mentioned in other posts, I focussed on learning and pace.

I first went moderately deep on technology skills. Then on a need basis, I kind of did a BFS on all skills needs to build and run a startup.

Eventually all the skills are important.

One other thing I really put a lot of effort in is trying to put me in the shoes of other parties. E.g. if I am trying to launch an idea I try to get in the shoes of engineer, pm, design, marketing, analytics and end user. Given that I have played all of these roles to some extent, it helps me make better decisions.

I feel that it's better to learn skills as a part of getting traction vs try to acquire skills in vacuum.

So have a razor sharp focus on building and adoption. If things are going great then cool. If not, introspect and seek advice till you figure out how to make progress. You will acquire skills along the way.

There is no magic bullet. Naval said that for success you need Product, Market, Founder fit. I would suggest go through his podcast "How to get rich".

I had kids after my startup was successful!

70% of expenses are marketing.

This is excellent advice. You should know and understand who your customer are. Otherwise you won't even know what to build. Or you will build the wrong product and won't get any feedback.

Congrats on your journey and best of luck for the future!

Nothing beats just getting down and building something end to end. As you do it more and more, you get better and faster.

I just came up with an analogy of trying to be successful at startup: Imagine someone who is just born in prehistoric rugged terrain who wants to reach some magical place. You don't know even how to crawl. There is some food and clues all over the place about how to reach the magical place. You have a magic button which can take you to slave house (corporate life). You could potentially come back from Corporate life to the startup life, but you would be bruised and would have picked bad skills which you know needs to forget.

You immediate focus should be gaining skills and pace. You will start by learning to crawl, walk, jump, climb, track your path, get better instincts, find food, look for clues, follow clues.

With more tries, you will get better at these. You will be better at navigating the terrain. You will get better heuristics which will determine your success.

Many time either people looking for a magic solution. This is equivalent to someone in this situation thinking if they can roll downhill and hope to be within crawling space of the magical space. It doesn't work that way. Some people do get lucky but most don't.

Any many times people are procrastinating. Which is like someone waiting at the edge of this magical world figuring out whether to make a plunge.

Just get started. You will figure out along the way. Make sure you have a good plan on health and finances!

All the questions you are asking are coming from your head and not your heart!

With wife and kids you want to follow your heart as long as your head (life situation) can support it.

If you would want to love your kids and be there for them, have them whenever you can. Nothing is guaranteed for anyone. Make your best case effort and love them from the bottom of your heart.

Don't seek out wife like an agenda. That is a receipt for disaster. I married my wife because that was the first person I met where my thought process was: "How can I make her happy" not "How does this person fulfill my image and needs from a life partner".

Your expectations from your life partner might change with time. If you start with a baseline and it doesn't hold anymore, it would likely lead to discontent and possibly separation. Expectation is the bane of all relationship.

For immediate family just focus on what you can give and don't expect anything back.

If you love what you are doing, it will give you the drive to keep doing it.

Listen to Naval's podcast about "How to get rich". He knows how to put ideas much better than me.

There are no shortcuts and if I tell you my winning lottery number after claiming the prize, it's not worth anything. Discover how you can provide value in your own unique way.

These are great tips. We do most of these.

Automate everything possible.

If you still can't manage and need human support, hire someone in India/Philippines part time, treat them like a valued employee, build a relationship.

This is a really good point. You can have at it all but you can definitely wish ;)

I know. We had kids around the same age.

In my case my big mistake was moving to US mid way in career. It disrupted by established life and I had to start over from scratch. If I had stayed in my native country, I would have been able to have kids earlier.

Thanks for sharing your experience!

Biggest issue with customer support are: Getting customers and supporting them.

Solution to both of them is making a simple product which provides incredible value which is self serve. Word of mouth will take care of the rest. Eventually build a community driven forum which will help with support.

Think about how many non-basic need products that you know which consumers pay which is not some kind of exclusive or monopoly: Utilities, Cable, Cell phone, NetflixEtc, Uber*.

Today's consumer doesn't like to pay for anything, especially if it is a digital product. They will do whatever they can to get out of paying either by pirating or trying to get a refund/chargeback after using it.

Sometimes they will do an impulse buy. Which is what we were able to work for us, but then bad actors try to make your life as miserable as possible.

B2B is not rosy and has its own set of issues. But I would rather kick 50 ungrateful users from the platform to their face, rather than deal with 10k ungrateful consumers.

Don't over think. Just start building anything that you feel could be useful to someone.

Don't fall in love with the idea. The idea you start with will never be the idea when you are successful. It will evolve or likely you will pivot to another related idea. Facebook today isn't what it started with. Flickr and Slack started as gaming companies. Google today is very different from what they started with.

It would help if you pick a good space. Ideally something which you know about, is big enough that there would be enough users.

And make sure you enjoy the process of going for it. If you set out with a sole goal to get rich and get famous, it can be very demotivating when things are not going your way.

We kept an iteration going as long as we saw a reasonable and viable path to keep growing the business.

One of the product was consumer and had a hockey stick growth curve obvious in the first week. So it was obvious to keep going on.

Another product was profitable and we could acquire new customers through advertising. So it was obvious to keep going on.

For the one's that didn't do good, initially I wasted a lot of time doing things which won't meaningfully help with adoption. Some of them are:

1. Building too many features.

2. Building too many platforms at launch.

3. Spending time on PR

4. Figuring out the perfect font for the website.

5. UI polish.

Over time you develop better heuristics. You can't ever be fully right but you just get somewhat better judgement.

I don't think that I can guarantee success. There was some angle of luck involved. However over time, because I am getting faster, I am getting more shots at the game. Earlier I could play one game over 2 years and make many mistake (which now look obvious to me) along the way. Now I can play multiple games every year. So that helps you build your own luck to some extent.

> Q1. What was the prerequisite for your success (product/service, team, market)?

Drive and desire of learn would probably be biggest. No task is good or bad: If something has to be done it has to be done.

Acquiring more skills apart from programming: devops, product, hiring, management, sales, marketing, legal, accounting. This help you develop holistic view of your product and company.

> Q2 What technology space are you in? (Digital/brand vs high-tech)?

Product for end consumer. The end product itself is not very high tech. I don't know a humble way to say it - but the tech powering the company is really well architected and managed.

> Q3 What weré your difficultis when iterating over your product concepts, and what was the iteration frequency?

This could be a 5000 word reply. In the end difficulties don't matter. Brutally prioritize and keep at it till you overcome it. Know when to cut your losses and move on.

> Q4 How long did it take to take off?

I had 3 products which saw good adoption. Only the current one is financially successful. Each of those took 1-2 months to build and we knew within a week that it was going to be successful.

I love building products. The financial success was a side product.

I should have qualified my statement about failures better.

Current one: Financially successful for me.

Another one: Financially successful but got screwed over.

Another one: Was very successful with adoption, but timing got wrong and didn't become financially successful.

2 others: Moderate success but financially not successful.

It was really tough, but I enjoyed the process. I love building products. I have a few really good ideas, but don't have bandwidth for them right now. I would keep building products for my love of it.

My long term goal is to leave the world a better place. It took 10+ years to get to the point that I can work on anything I want to without worrying about bills.

I regret delaying having kids. I regret not spending enough time with family and friends. I wish I had taken better care of my health. But right now I get to spend more time with my kids than any of my friends.

Every individual is different with their situation and motivations. What worked for me might not work for others. The thing which helped me the most was my innate desire to build better products and making sure I keep learning more and more.

My life's driving principle is: If I can't look back at my self 2 years back and I don't think I was so stupid back then I am not learning fast enough.

Even though I have regrets, I would say it was worth it. Of course if I could I wish few things would have gone differently about my life - but who doesn't.

I don't spend the money I already make. Not sure what I would do with 10x money.

1% ungrateful complaining consumer out of 1 million users are 10k users. I don't like dealing with them. At 10x the business they might become 100k or more. I would rather have 10k high paying Saas customers and weed out the ungrateful ones there but to their face.

Currently we are working above the board with no dark patterns. We have one of the best customer service and refund policies across possibly all consumer internet companies. Our competitors have lot of dark patterns. To grow 10k, we might need to do shittier things which I don't want to.

I know there are lot of founders and executives out there who would be fine doing dark patterns for growth. But I am not and maybe that is my shortcoming and which is why I didn't want to grow in the Corporate ladder. If I own the company, I can have final say on these things.

Every year you delay having kids, you are reducing the amount of time you will spend with your kids and grandkids.

As you get older, the quality of time you spend with them will also get worse.

My wife went through lot of difficulties in her pregnancies. It would have been easier for her body, if we had kids earlier.

My drive to get out of the corporate slavery was the reason for the delay. So I regret the delay.

I will try to answer multiple questions here because I am being throttled:

> How do you handle support with just 3 people? I imagine at that scale you either have a lot of customers, or small number of customers with very specific needs.

We are highly automated. Very very few queries get through and they are contracted out.

> what is the skillset of 3 people? 1 product, 1 sale/market, 1 developer or something else? how complex is the product in terms of technology?

2 developers (I am 1 of them) and 1 person for everything else.

> Are you in a large market with competitors but still plenty of room, or have you more or less cornered a smaller one?

It's a large market with 20+ competitors. Because our operational costs are so low and we are highly automated we could take over big chunk of business from our competitors. Essentially the dynamic is like Altavista vs Google.

Our competitors sometimes do some really dark patterns. I am realizing that almost all companies do that (Google incognito tracking, Facebook charging kids in games etc). Somehow I can't get myself to do that. So I am thinking of moving to Saas so that I can deal with mature customers and ideally provide them value.

> What are your skillsets? How did you get there?

I am a programmer as my core skill. But I have also played product, marketing, sales, hiring through my career. To get good a these, I worked in my jobs as if I was the owner. That helped get me experience faster.

If people want to do a startup, best advice for them would be join a startup with good team at an early stage. Bonus points if that startup is in a space you like. Learn, make good friends and then then do your own startup.

I really recommend Naval's "How to get rich" podcast. It's as if he is talking about my life. He decided to move to more investing, but I still like building stuff myself.

> What distinguished the successful attempts from the unsuccessful ones? > How did you know when it was time to move on?

If I don't know how to keep growing the business, it's a dead-end and time to move on.