
Ask HN: Advice on pre-selling enterprise software? - tixocloud
Hi,<p>On the back of our offering, we&#x27;ve managed to book a few demos with enterprises. Wondering if anyone has any advice on whether we can&#x2F;should pre-sell to enterprise companies given that there&#x27;s still quite a lot of product to be built? How will we structure the deal?<p>Cheers
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dyeje
If you don't have any experience with Enterprise sales, you're in for a rough
time with an early stage product. These customers are demanding, the sales
cycles are long, and there are often many players you need to please. I would
recommend finding someone experienced in Enterprise sales before chasing those
customers. Otherwise, you'll probably end up wasting a lot of time and effort
chasing deals that just aren't going to happen.

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tixocloud
Thanks. Stuck in a little bit of a rut as there seems to be more interest on
the enterprise side than lower down the market. They’ve been our best
indication of viability so far. SMEs haven’t really responded as much.

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TimJYoung
My advice: don't pre-sell anything unless a) it's simply to get a public beta
in the hands of customers that want/need to use it right away, and b) even
then, have a practical and do-able timeline in place for finishing any
documentation, etc. that needs to be done for the final, polished product.
And, above all else, _do not spend the money_ \- just put it in an escrow
account or something similar.

I've been involved as a consultant with a company that took deposit money from
customers, used the money to fund development of the software, and didn't
deliver. It's surprisingly easy to screw up, so don't put yourself in that
position. It's extremely stressful for the principals in the company, as well
as the engineers tasked with the herculean task of trying to create something
lasting while under the gun.

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tixocloud
Thanks. The challenge I have is that we don’t have enough runway for our
engineers and hoping to secure funds either through a paid POC or use the
deposit to raise funds.

Any thoughts?

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TimJYoung
Is there any chance that the engineers can get some "sweat equity" in the
company ? It really does align the interests of the engineers with the outcome
of the company, and can be a positive if it helps you get through this
existential crisis (100% of zero is still zero). This is exactly what I tried,
in vain, to convince the owner of the company (that I described in my original
reply) to do. I also recommended that they let any non-essential personnel go
and stick with the bare minimum core that they needed to actually finish the
product. And yes, it _will_ take longer to get the product done, but unless
you're doing a product that is easily replicated (doubtful, if it's
enterprise), then it really doesn't matter. Good enterprise software typically
lasts for decades, not years.

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stupeo
How confident are you on delivering what you are going to sell?

I worked for a global healthcare IT company that was notoriously bad at
selling "futures" \- modules, functionality and even applications that didn't
exist. It came back to bite them on the ass massively - even with a strong and
large engineering/test/release team.

Can you phase the product and structure the deal based on that? For example:

1\. Sign contract or MoU with enterprise including timelines. 2\. Deliver core
functionality and realise first revenue. etc.

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tixocloud
We’re quite confident at delivering and already have a prototype going.
However, most of the engineers are still part-time on this and I’d like to
secure something from a prospect to be able to raise funding.

We could potentially phase the product. The other thing we were thinking of is
a paid POC/trial.

