You wrote about "small, honest teams" - the older I get the more I get the hunch that small teams/companies are a great way to go for me. Basically, choose some field you enjoy working in, with people you like. Any thoughts on how to find something like this? I feel like its the kind of thing you have to start yourself, but I can't take much risk.

My experience in finding one (15 people at the company I’m currently at, and I’m one of 3.5 engineers) (.5 because founder still codes more than we’d like him to) was effectively reaching out to companies that I knew didn’t have job postings up, and was the size that I’d fit into. I learned quickly that not every vacancy is posted publicly.

> not every vacancy is posted publicly

Thanks for this insight, hopefully would help me.

Also, love the bit "small, honest teams". Aligns really well with my biases.

Solid advice, thank you very much.

I was just just interested in how your "say no" lesson came from the streaming site. I am sure they asked you for all sorts of channels, but from their perspective, I kind of understand it. I had really wondered what kind of crazy of stuff you were shooting down. I didn't expect anyone to go too crazy on expecting feature requests on a pirate site.

The typical ones were things like MMA/UFC/boxing, and those I'd say no to because their business model revolves around PPV; things like NCAA sports I said no to because I refused to profit off children (NIL didn't exist at the time) and that the implementation would have required me to "integrate" more than 5 different services just to attempt parity; I'd get the occasional EPL or UEFA requests, too.

I really didn't have any significant demand for these. One of my litmus tests, besides demand, was "okay, can this be as good as the other sports' implementations?" I was always concerned about feature parity—I could have provided radio feeds for MLB but not for NBA, and that would cause people to say "well they have radio feeds for x but not y" and create confusion as to what is what. Being consistent in this regard was important.

The run-of-the-mill IPTV requests came and went, and I just wasn't interested in that. Ultimately I made the site for me so I could watch sports, I just had some other people watching with me.

Were you aware of the risk you were getting yourself into when you built heheStreams? Did you take any precautions and how did you sleep at night?

I don’t understand how people think that they have a good chance of getting away with something like this?

There must be safer ways to make good money?

It wasn't about the money whatsoever.

Btw you ever got you gh acct back? Really shitty situation, best wishes

Thanks for asking. No, not yet, I'm working on introducing myself to their legal team with hopes that they might be able to take that as serious enough to believe I am me.

You should reach out to Scott Chacon - he's very accessible and I feel like he'd be sympathetic to your situation and could fix everything up quite quickly.

Thanks for the advice, I sent him a note on LinkedIn.