A founder argues startups should act boldly without waiting for permission, citing Google Books and Uber as examples that sidestepped legal approval. When lawyers say something is prohibited, challenge them rather than accept the restriction, as long as you avoid criminal lines.
Ask for forgiveness, not for permission. I think that is one thing that as startup founders, as Silicon Valley, we need to do more of. We're already doing it more than the rest of the world, but we need to do even more of. Now, when you think about Google Books, the idea was that, you know, you would scan books and you would basically give them more or less for free to the rest of the world. And obviously people weren't too happy about that. It took years to actually settle those those issues. But before that, Google would scan catalogs. And no one was worried about the Williams-Sonoma catalog being scanned and put online and distributed to everybody. That's why they actually built the technology that became Google Books. And when you think about today, companies like Uber, who's been coming up 5 times already this afternoon. But Uber didn't ask for permission. They didn't go to the Taxi Commission and say, hey, we have this idea. We want to do this and that. They just did it. They just did it. They broke some rules. They didn't break really laws from what I understand, but they certainly stretched some of the interpretation of the laws. And I think as startups you can fly under the radar for a very, very long time before anyone cares about what you do. So if you have any regulations that of course don't get you into jail, but any regulations that you should be obeying by and your lawyer is telling you, you can't do this, you can't do that. Just ask them why not.
