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Ask HN: I Am Stuck Between A Rock & A Hard Place. What's Next?
I am in the process of creating a web based service for small businesses. So, I went out and got feedback from as diverse a group of people I could find within my immediate environment (I live in India).
The feedback I got was troubling to say the least. The thing is that although after an extended conversation and repeated cold calling people understood and appreciated what I was trying to offer. They're still refusing to use it in a small private alpha. Why?
The thing is that I am asking them to store their financial records with me and, although privacy is not an issue, they are worried about tax. In fact, they have an elaborate culture in place to tackle just this. This ranges from bribes, destruction of all financial records at the end of the fiscal year to purposeful inventory mismanagement to throw off the sales data. For example, if they got ten boxes of something they'll put in 5 and keep the rest black.
Since, the paper trail is huge and the honest tax authorities like to trap big-wigs. they get away with it. So, if they opt into my service in the longer run the noose tightens on them. The obvious way out would be to encrypt the database and allow for regular erasures, but that undermines the core benefits of my service.
Moreover, I intend to stick around for a while. So, it's pretty inevitable that I'll have a messy legal situation on my hands down the road. The precedent has already been set and it's disturbing to say the least (see: http://knol.google.com/k/david-sarokin/google-ordered-to-reveal-blogger/l9cm7v116zcn/7# ).
It also doesn't help my cause that I am still a teenager. It's quite obvious to everyone that I cannot possibly know what I am talking about. It's a trivial issue, but it's amazing how such things tend to bias conversations.
So, any tips on what I should do?
Thank you.
- nudge 16y agoDon't be disheartened. You came up with a product, and it does not fit your market (tax cheats, apparently). I would search for customers who do not have such a problem with being honest about their financial situation. You don't want to get into the business of helping people evade tax. That's a good way to spend a long time in prison.
- michael_dorfman 16y agoSo, any tips on what I should do? Find a co-founder, preferably someone who is a) not a teenager, and b) exudes enough gravitas to convince prospects that you guys know what you are doing. The other things you might want to do is to meditate a while on your value proposition. If your potential customers are telling you that external factors (such as the desire to keep data off the books) are large enough to render the benefits of your service moot, you need to take that seriously. There are a number of ways out of that conundrum: increase the benefit of using your service, so that it outweighs the negatives (of potential exposure to the authorities); alternately, find a way to mitigate the negatives (i.e., a higher level of security/deniability, that would allow people to maintain their current practices); or, pivoting to another related idea that does not have the complications fo this one.