I planned to launch on Friday, then I shut it all down...fearing a lawsuit...how can I pivot?

Daniel Shinall
5 replies
I spent over 2 months building, and thought I had a great product. After sharing with a few people last week, a couple of them convinced me that I might get sued. My app, maching.ai - AI-Powered Job Matching, worked like this: - Users submit a selfie, then enter a location where they want to work (or choose "remote") - Facial analysis software estimated their age - ChatGPT would recommend 5 career positions for someone of their estimated age, including at least 3 entry-level positions. - The app would search across job sites, and display listings that matched Users' recommended positions in the location they entered. Also, it had a Remote Featured page. - Companies/employers could pay to have jobs posted to this page - This page would be available for everyone to browse all of the Featured Remote jobs without using the AI-powered search. -- The Featured jobs would also show up in Users' AI-powered searches when matching recommended career positions. I explained exactly how this all worked on the site. In the US, and many other countries, you aren't allowed to age discriminate when hiring. I thought that since the Featured Remote job listings were always available to all, that my app was not doing anything wrong. And though the AI-powered searches were pulling listings from other sites, so those employers would not be choosing to show their listings based on Users' estimated ages...I'm just not sure if my app would be operating legally. - Even if it was, I could see someone filing a lawsuit, and I wouldn't be able to fight it. This was a hard decision, but I think it's for the best, and now I'd like to find a way to pivot. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Nothing I've come up with seems nearly as fun to use.

Replies

RDS
Better talk with lawyers. Not here. They will help you better.
Daniel Shinall
@rds1 thanks friend. Appreciate all the advice! 🤝
Daniel Shinall
@rds1 thanks for the advice, however, I'm hoping to pivot the app into something that's more clearly not something that needs to be reviewed with lawyers. I'm not planning to launch it as described above. I'd still like to have the job site-element, but move away from AI-powered searches based on Users' estimated ages. Still open to ideas to help pivot the app.
RDS
@danielshinall welcome. The thing is once you get into business sector. You always keep lawyer at your side. There are some friendly lawyers who actually give tactics to save tax, help you to grow with there knowledge. Just giving an advise. Maybe don’t launch but just visit to lawyer once (not forcing or anything. All upto you) Giving you advice as a friend. Btw, maybe don’t show estimate knowledge on the screen and let it run at background. Not sure if it helps you to launch your app.