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Ask HN: Selling B2B Software to a Chinese company
So my start-up sells B2B software for small to medium-sized companies, primarily productivity tools for researchers.
Now an institute in China is interested in the software but they are insistent that they want to host it on their servers. Pros/Cons? Yes/No?
- Edmond 16y agoThey want your source and will almost certainly pirate it:)
- jayzee 16y agoThanks! yeah, thats what I was thinking but was hoping that people would say otherwise/offer reasons why they would be insistent on hosting it locally.
- jhancock 16y agorambling late night thoughts from someone who has done lots in China: Do you expect more customers in China? If so, find a partner in China to handle sales there. I would expect most any Chinese customer to want to have your solution hosted in China..either by themselves or at least through a China based server. They do have good reasons for hosting it themselves that have nothing to do with stealing your product. You will always risk your product being copied. This is a good reason to find a China partner that manages this process for you. B2B software sales in China is an "ok" market. Chinese companies do spend money on specialty software and there is usually a purchasing officer at a company that makes money off the process of spending money. If you do not understand how this works, best to find a local partner. Ultimately though, even if they do copy your product, it may not effect sales to other markets.
- jayzee 16y agoThanks jhancock. It is true that it may not affect sales in other markets but I was hoping to make money from sales in china for my company!:)