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How did you go about getting purchase orders for products? My contracting work has always been on a time and materials basis. Have always felt it felt rude / aw
by gb2d 5y ago
How did you go about getting purchase orders for products? My contracting work has always been on a time and materials basis. Have always felt it felt rude / awkward to offer the building of a product on different terms to the rest of the work I was doing, but it is something I'd like to try.
- _hcuq 5y agoGood question! I would just quote a fixed price to each prospect. Then they may come back with an hourly rate proposal…. But of course any company that sees your work as a part of their intellectual property will not be interested. So I could never do this if I was working on a product that the customer was going to sell. Where I was able to charge a fixed price and own the IP was instrumentation software for Biotech companies. They were not interested in IP for obscure instruments. Also I found that small engineering companies who were struggling with their software capability would be very interested in a fixed price + royalty deal. Because they struggled to hire software talent. So the key is to find customers with “non core” needs. Eg if they need a time tracking program they are unlikely to care who owns the IP. But if you are working on a search algorithm for a search engine company they will only employ you on a time and materials basis.