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It's called vaperware and it's part of a lean strategy (that way you only build what people actually want). It's extremely common, in fact I believe New Relic w

It's called vaperware and it's part of a lean strategy (that way you only build what people actually want). It's extremely common, in fact I believe New Relic was founded using this type of strategy. Take this with a grain of salt because this is an old passing memory of mine, but I believe Lew Cirne called up business owners and sold a bunch of them on the original new relic product before even developing it. I don't think it is necessarily unethical if you know that you can do it (so long as you can deliver before they start paying), if it is some sort of technology that you aren't sure is possible or not that is certainly different.

keithpeter 12y ago
"...I don't think it is necessarily unethical if you know that you can do it (so long as you can deliver before they start paying)" So the salesperson/founder needs to have a good enough model of how the software works so that they know if a feature is relatively easy to provide, or if as another poster commented, it would require say a major change in a database design. I don't think it is necessarily unethical if you know that you can do it (so long as you can deliver before they start paying) When I was being sold to, I developed a good ear for phrases like 'in development' or 'that is just a custom report'. We used put it all in writing &c.