Since I entered the world of "young businesses," where most don't last three months with the same name or even remain open, I realized that the people behind these businesses were people like me—young, ambitious, and hungry.
When you start doing business before having the age for it, maturity, values, and respect, you see that people around you often take advantage of you.
My first client paid me €80 per month for work that took me 2-3 hours a day to maintain. Meanwhile, the competition was selling the same for over €200 a month. So, after three months, they stopped paying me. This meant I had to pay the suppliers out of my own pocket.
Things like this happen very often because, at the beginning, it's not easy at all to sell a service for $200-400 a month.
But that's not even the tip of the iceberg. In sneaker bot businesses and similar ventures, there's an underground economy where thousands of dollars are scammed. For example, let's say you're a sneaker bot company and you need to add a website with tough web security to bypass. Well, there are groups where you can buy "bypasses," and these can cost hundreds of dollars depending on the website.
The certainty that the other person will send you something correct sometimes depends only on you, as you have to know very well what you're buying, because sometimes you're buying blind.
When I was working at Copsneak, I had to buy several of these, including one that was quite expensive for that time, costing around €600. But it wasn't what we were looking for.
What we wanted to obtain was crucial for the success of the service at that time, but we received something very different. The bad part was that the seller was a well-known figure in the industry, an entrepreneur who sold his SaaS for over $50k.
But even so, I explained to him that what he sold me was not what I was looking for and that the only solution for me was for him to refund the money. At that time, I didn't have extra money, and that money was needed for other company movements because otherwise, I would have to close the next month. Despite explaining this and according to what he said, "I don't need the money," he didn't want to refund it.
That's when I realized that all these people only move FOR and BY money; they do no social or ethical good.
When I sold Copsneak, I already knew that the next project I created would have an ethical code and a social objective that contributes to others. (Some time later, I created VitalEatsClub).