

Ask HN: How to Recruit a Partner for a Pre-sold/Pre-development Product - joelhaus

A B2B SaaS accounting product we are preparing already has it's first customer. This customer has also offered to partially fund it's development in exchange for a royalty fee.<p>Certain back-end technical aspects of the application are outside the scope of my expertise. In addition, there are the usual ongoing maintenance and support concerns that will require attention and having someone technical on call that can patch right away is important.<p>Would you hire/outsource for help or take on a technical partner? Leaning towards taking on a partner and would appreciate any advice on how to go about this. Would you approach small development shops or individuals?<p>Any thoughts/experiences you can share would be helpful.
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troels
Can you explain what kind of product it is, and how you got your hands on it,
if you didn't develop it?

~~~
joelhaus
Sure, it's a very targeted product and we're still in the process of refining
the business requirements, so apologies for any vagueness.

The firm (which I have done work for) focuses on various tax matters for
international corporations and high net-worth individuals. The product will
streamline certain compliance tasks performed for clients. Initially, they
requested this as a private project, but given the fixed costs, they have
agreed to explore offering the product to other firms.

Specifically, if anyone can provide some advice on recruiting a partner for a
product with a built-in customer, I would be grateful. In my mind, this
minimizes risk and introduces a different dynamic than you would find with an
unproven product and no revenue.

I'm not so concerned with the getting version 1 out the door, but having
someone to help with more scalable deployment, on-going maintenance and
devising/implementing a product roadmap would allow me to focus on marketing
the product after the initial launch (the alternative is to outsource for any
help I need and keep this as a private project, but it seems like a straight-
forward opportunity).

~~~
troels
OK, I'm not sure how valuable my advice can be, since I'm usually not in your
situation, being a tech person myself. But I think you would be better off
with a technical partner than with a small development shop. A shop is
generally going to try and deliver a finished product in a given time frame.
They will not take the long perspective on things. A partner would do that.

If you're going to persuade someone to partner up with you, I would question
what you can offer to him. Having a customer is obviously a big plus, but I
wonder - What are you -personally - bringing to the table? Why shouldn't he
cater directly with the customer and leave you out?

~~~
joelhaus
Thank you troels. I agree that it's important to bring something valuable to
the table and my technical expertise is limited (but improving). Can you give
some examples of things you would look for?

Without knowing your answer, I would point to my long-term relationship with
the customer, domain expertise, industry connections and some relatively
successful business exits under my belt.

 _P.S. Just thought of something; a search of public code repos for tax
related software might be a good place to look._

 _P.P.S. The tax software industry is ripe for disruption. I've used many of
the popular commercial programs and they are horrendous!_

~~~
troels
Connections (including that to the customer) are fine, but those are not
skills that you can apply - They are more like something you've inherited from
your past. A deep knowledge of domain is useful, but a developer could pick
that up over time, given that he has access to customers. So while it works
for the short term, you need to have something for the longer term as well. I
would look at what you can actively do for the project. In particular, I would
look for a genuine interest (from you) to partake in the product development -
even some of th things that you may consider technical. Of course, if you can
pay a salary, then it will make it easier to get someone on board.

 _The tax software industry is ripe for disruption. I've used many of the
popular commercial programs and they are horrendous!_

I believe that. Accounting is not something that most developers find
sexy/interesting, so it's probably a rather underdeveloped field.

 _Just thought of something; a search of public code repos for tax related
software might be a good place to look._

I would suggest that you look for a personality first, and specific technical
skills second. Perhaps you could go to a <http://startupweekend.org/> event,
if there's one near your location? You don't have to pitch this particular
idea, but it is a great opportunity to find a potential partner.

