3 ms·

I don't know why you are so pessimistic, they are going to pay our standard annual fee once out of beta. It would not benefit them to spent so much time helping

I don't know why you are so pessimistic, they are going to pay our standard annual fee once out of beta. It would not benefit them to spent so much time helping us develop things to their spec and not be able to use it.

brudgers 6y ago
Ordinarily, companies pay for someone to develop software bespoke to their needs. They hire consultants to do it. Hell, ordinarily companies pay consultants just for the process of figuring out what the needs are, never mind the solution. From the information provided, it does not appear the potential customer has paid for the value already provided. In fact, the potential customer is now requiring you to pay them. And your company is over a barrel. In much of the world, 10-20k per year is a small fraction of what a business needs to be sustainable. Even a small consultancy needs between 10x and 100x that turnover to be a minimally viable business. Outsourcing sales doesn't make it any better because the potential client does not have a significant incentive to go out and sell your product because selling your product is not their primary business. Selling your product is your primary business. The dependency on outside sales means that your business does not control staffing, pricing, and customer relations. Why am I pessimistic? Red flags in your potential client's behavior. The behavior is win-lose not win-win. Every piece of it is at your loss and the potential client's gain. None of it is to insure the stability of your business. Assuming the potential client isn't stupid, that means that their strategy does not require your business to stay in business. The simplest explanation for that strategy is that the potential client doesn't actually need your product or that the potential client expects to acquire your product in whole when your non-viable business liquidates. I could be wrong. I hope I am. And I admit that I am stupid enough to have come to my conclusions by my own hard and sad experience. I paid the dumb tax to learn to recognize bad clients. I learned human behavior unprofitably. Your experience may be different. Again I hope so. Good luck.

brudgers 6y ago

Ordinarily, companies pay for someone to develop software bespoke to their needs. They hire consultants to do it. Hell, ordinarily companies pay consultants just for the process of figuring out what the needs are, never mind the solution. From the information provided, it does not appear the potential customer has paid for the value already provided. In fact, the potential customer is now requiring you to pay them. And your company is over a barrel. In much of the world, 10-20k per year is a small fraction of what a business needs to be sustainable. Even a small consultancy needs between 10x and 100x that turnover to be a minimally viable business. Outsourcing sales doesn't make it any better because the potential client does not have a significant incentive to go out and sell your product because selling your product is not their primary business. Selling your product is your primary business. The dependency on outside sales means that your business does not control staffing, pricing, and customer relations. Why am I pessimistic? Red flags in your potential client's behavior. The behavior is win-lose not win-win. Every piece of it is at your loss and the potential client's gain. None of it is to insure the stability of your business. Assuming the potential client isn't stupid, that means that their strategy does not require your business to stay in business. The simplest explanation for that strategy is that the potential client doesn't actually need your product or that the potential client expects to acquire your product in whole when your non-viable business liquidates. I could be wrong. I hope I am. And I admit that I am stupid enough to have come to my conclusions by my own hard and sad experience. I paid the dumb tax to learn to recognize bad clients. I learned human behavior unprofitably. Your experience may be different. Again I hope so. Good luck.