Ask HN: My Startup is Illegal

My Startup Is Illegal

I am designing a P2P hardware product that will (among other things) make it harder for governments to intercept or acquire the data from users’ private communications. I am working with one other person, and our concern is this:

How do you move forward with something when you know you might be taken to court, put under surveillance, heavily fined, or otherwise harassed?

We are both shy people who like to work behind the scenes. Our current strategy is to keep to ourselves and try to get a working product while off the radar. Unfortunately our other problem is that we need help and don’t know how to ask for it. We specialize in software and security and we have no experience with building hardware prototypes. Both of us are working for free, he supports a large family doing side jobs, and my family is helping me out.

I guess the discussion I would like to see is twofold:

1) How do you stay strong when faced with a huge legal grey area like this? Have you ever survived being typecast as “the wrong side of the law”? How can you move forward with innovation when you are constantly in a paranoid state?

2) How do you meet people when you feel uptight discussing the details of your project? Especially when you can’t afford to hire someone, and you need to appeal to the small group who are motivated by similar passions?

I hope we are not too DIY for our own good. I would hate to see a creative project like this get killed because of something so surmountable.

It might be difficult for me to answer questions about my situation, especially publicly. I am open to the idea of talking privately, and I apologize in advance if I seem cagey.

notme8000@hushmail.com