

Ask HN: Demo to our Competitor? - martinroldan

Short version : Should we allow our Competitor, who has more resources than we do but an inferior product (of course!!;) to try our app in closed beta or is it too risky since they lost customers to us recently?
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alexobenauer
What is the benefit in doing so? (Or, asked from another angle, why are you
contemplating this move?)

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martinroldan
Because they have built a great business in traditional media monitoring for
brands and they are adding social media to their mix on an old platform. In a
sense, our product would be the perfect addition to their lineup but I don'y
think we're ready to be seen as potential sellers, we don,t have enough
traction for this yet.

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johnrgrace
If your not ready to sell, don't do it. A smart sharp person can learn a LOT
from someone else doing a demo, you're only edge is what you know and thinking
when you have less resources

Go read the Harvard Business School working paper: When Open Architecture
Beats Closed: The Entrepreneurial Use of Architectural Knowledge. The main
point of the paper is that entrepreneurs have an information advantage, giving
a demo could waste that one critical advantage.

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martinroldan
I'll read it. Thanks!

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brk
Not enough information to go on here. Without having some idea of what the
upside is to you, this seems to be far more risky than worthwhile.

Now, if they have an inferior product, but a hugely us period bank account and
you think this is a due diligence precursor it _might_ be worthwhile. But more
then likely even in that case you would be better off doing a garden path demo
TO them, have one of your employees walk them through the highlights, not give
them a full app to play with.

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martinroldan
The upside is that they would be natural potential buyers of our company, but
we're far from being ready for that.

