Comment by sijoe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sijoe | Hacker News Reader

Been thinking about doing the customer version of this.

[after a long indepth technical discussion with a qualified opportunity, quoting, resources allocated, ready to pull the trigger on a large project]

me: So we are ready to go, waiting on the PO

them: Sure, just working through our process

(falls off internets, doesn't respond to phone calls/emails/rejects visits)

Months go by

them: We set up an RFP and bought from someone else.

me: Er ... you used our confidential material (marked as such) to set up a public RFP, that you didn't even invite us to, or respond to our queries? Seriously?

them: Yes.

[bangs head on table, but it gets better ... no ... the other thing]

them: the system we bought (not yours), isn't performing nearly as well as your system that we POCed on.

me: So? Why not call your vendor and have them help you?

them: they aren't able to. They don't know this stuff as well as you do.

me: So, let me get this right ... you want me to provide consulting services to help a competitor of ours ... compete ... with us?

them: Not so much consulting, as free advice and guidance. Like you did during the POC.

[resumes banging head on table]

them: hello? whats that noise?

[years pass]

them: we need to rethink our strategy, it was an order of magnitude slower than your unit at about 2-3x the cost.

me: no kidding Sherlock

them: we want to start this process again ....

me: (fits of laughter) uh ... no.

Years back, I was on the other side of this. They didn't like my mockups but they liked my price, so they took the other company's comps and handed them to me. Their logo, "confidential" and the like were still on them.

I told the customer I wanted a written release from the other company to use their stuff, especially since some of it would end up in our promo/marketing info.

They called me "not a team player" and cut my team loose from the project. Six months later they fired many of the senior staff for missing funds and a lawsuit from that other company.

Karma is a bitch.

I had a client who was curious why I was charging him to draw up quotes as a sub-contractor.

Weeks went by after they proposed the project. Later, I found out in a slightly roundabout way they went to another developer (overseas, cheaper) after sharing my quote and spec with the client :)

The customer version already exists: http://clientsfromhell.net/

uhm, this is your fault. why were you working for free?

a quote is one thing and as a sales professional you should expect to waste a huge amount of time on quotes that never go anywhere, but a proof of concept is supposed to be something you charge for. it's engineering work!!!

if they don't want to pay for a poc, that's a real good sign that they're not worth working for.

We've limit "working for free", to things that should help us close business against existing quotes with a commitment from the customer to execute on the quote in question. Our work is hard enough to replicate elsewhere that there is a natural incentive to work with us if we meet their objectives. More formally, we had at least an agreement to work together if we met their objectives. We blew them out (way better than they anticipated), which worked strongly in our favor.

Unfortunately, while you are correct it is our, and specifically my (the buck stops with me) fault, I've run into variations on this from very small "free advice" requests, through what amounted to fake RFPs, where the 'customer' loved our design, and in one case specifically asked us to train our competitors and share our IP (with no compensation) to have them deliver it.

This POC was piggy backed atop another project that had ended, and it amounted to getting some run-time in for them, after they indicated a strong preference for us (given our recent domination of an industry benchmark at the time). The 'customer' swore they would buy, and I worked to get an operational quote in front of them that they agreed to push through if the POC was in fact viable.

So much for that.

One thing I've learned over the years (no, decades) of startup life is, you don't have the deal until the check clears. Curious how similar this is to raising capital.

The cost of this POC for us was power/cooling, some of my time, and the opportunity cost of not using the machine for other engineering work. But the long term cost to the customer for their poor behavior and poor choices can't be easily measured, other than them not hitting their KPOs.

I do take full blame for this failure though. It was mine. But it is still annoying. All teachable moments leave marks.

here's a tip: if a customer ever asks for an 'escape clause' in a contract, unless tied to very specific measurable things, they're going to rip you off.

> Curious how similar this is to raising capital.

Exactly the same.

interestingly, a lot of our sales woes went away when we started asking for some money up front. we're all first-time sales people at my outfit.

people who are willing to pay a small fee up front are the only people you can work with as a services startup, the rest are worthless.

> We've limit "working for free", to things that should help us close business against existing quotes with a commitment

heuristic: if someone has to log into a machine, it's no longer sales, and is engineering.

this is hard to do. it takes discipline. it takes wondering "gee we could have gotten that sale." and tossing it to the wind. it's HARD. but you have to do it. please have some self-respect, our industry is short on it.

This is my worst nightmare.

Enterprise sales cycles kill startups. Yes, the stupidity of big orgs is maddening. But it's that same stupidity that leaves so many opportunities on the table for startups to seize.

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