
Ask HN: Selling SaaS to government authorities? - philippnagel
The title pretty much sums up my question.<p>Together with another developer I am currently building a citizen happiness analytics solution for government authorities.<p>Any tips or experiences with selling SaaS to our target market? General B2G tips?
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smt88
It is the worst market to sell to. Deals of any substance take years at a
minimum. There's no accountability, either -- your deal can get canceled for
no reason at any time. The sales cycle is astronomically expensive, and the
required SLAs are incredibly extensive and costly. There's a reason
governments rarely, if ever, do business with small startups without massive
amounts of cash.

As far as happiness goes, this are already measured in its most relevant form
as approval ratings, and it's done so with varying degrees of accuracy by
professional polling organizations.

If you've been following FiveThirtyEight, you'll know that polls have become
exceedingly difficult to conduct with accuracy. People just don't respond to
them like they used to, and it's very hard to reach certain segments that are
vital to having a representative sample (e.g. low-income Latinos in the US).

And besides all that, why would a government want to analyze citizen
happiness? It's very naive to believe that career politicians are working to
make people happy. They have many complicated personal reasons for doing what
they do, along with some combination of desire for fame, influence, or money.

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thejteam
It is easier to market it as a product with an annual maintenance fee than as
"SaaS". I say this because there is an established process (GSA for feds, it
varies by state and local) for selling products, even product with maintenance
agreements.

Another route you can take, depending on the agencies you are selling to, is
to sell it to existing federal contractors. There is usually a "materials"
line in their contract for buying stuff to bypass the normal process. This is
common with DOD, not sure about others.

Good luck.

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vqc
Check out some of the early blog posts at www.opengov.com and the whitepapers
published by Formation 8, e.g. [http://formation8.com/resources/b2g-the-
excitement-of-an-old...](http://formation8.com/resources/b2g-the-excitement-
of-an-old-line-industry/)

