Maybe it happens, but all the stories I've ever heard are of the form "we tried to sell it, but no one would buy it. So we created the business ourselves, and h

Maybe it happens, but all the stories I've ever heard are of the form "we tried to sell it, but no one would buy it. So we created the business ourselves, and here we are $X billions later". I'm sure there's selection bias, in that I don't hear about the people who tried to create a business but failed; and I don't hear about the people who did successfully sell it (because the software is absorbed into the acquirer and rebranded). The closest is the small software companies bought by Sun, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Oracle and so on. But they always seem to buy the company; and the company always seems to have customers. There could be exceptions, but I know of none. (1). System: No one buys software. They buy solutions to their problems - especially in the enterprise. That is, a "whole product": integration, support, maintenance, documentation, training, interoperability and so on. You might say they buy a "system". This partly explains why some enterprise software products can appear pretty crap. It's because the product itself isn't particularly critical - it's just a factor. (2). Users: If you don't have users, how do you know it is usable in practice? Does it interoperate with their other systems? How does it cope with real world loads? Fred Brooks said that more users find more bugs. Will the very first user encounter a few show-stoppers? (Sorry to be so negative - maybe you have done many of these things; but without users, it's impossible). In a way, it is much easier to start with an absurdly trivial program, and grow it with a community of users (or customers). That's how most (not all) successful software seems to be built. (3). Exception: If you aimed at plug-compatibility, so that your software can more-or-less invisibly and silently slot into an existing role, and it also is better by objective measures (such as speed, memory use, accuracy, reliability), and these improvements matter to at least some customers, then you might be able to sell it. For example, Sun publishes many of its specifications as standards, to deliberately create a marketplace for implementors like yourselves. If you pass the compatibility suite, it's a start (but the buyer would still need to be able to extend it themselves, support it, fix bugs and so on - the system again). As someone else said: If you are exhausted, please take a break before making any decisions. It's impossible to see opportunities when you are too tired. Note that I don't know anything about what you've actually done, or your actual opportunities - so there may be many ways around them. Could you elaborate on "beats most commercial offerings in its field"? Disclaimer: although I've written software and sold several licenses for it, a few to the enterprise, I haven't sold a company (or the software in the way you mean).