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Comment by jasontan | Hacker News Reader

That sucks. We (Sift Science) have been building something similar for 7 years and aren’t going anywhere. If we can help, please ping me - jason at siftscience dot com

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> We (Sift Science) have been building something similar for 7 years and aren’t going anywhere.

But that doesn't come with any actual guarantees does it?

What kind of guarantee would be satisfying?

The contract should specify. The contract probably was sided on smytes favor. Screwing even paying customers.

You can have a contract where you specify indemnification of damage in case the business ceases operations, goes bankrupt, get acquired, etc...

The parent comment is justified.

While you can have a contract that indemnifies that isn’t going to help your going concerns when the other party just pulls the plug.

I think company bylaws that prevent a 'triangle merger' like this might be useful.

what's stopping the company owners -who are generally the ones executing such a merger- from changing the bylaws ?

A guarantee is only as good as the guarantor. A guarantor can be a company providing a service, as well as all sorts of assorted guarantees about said service.

In time, the situation can change. The product can get sold. Cash can be spent. The guarantor can no longer make good on its guarantees.

You're back to square one where the guarantees are as worthless as the original service.

You need 3rd party backing (insurance) in such situations, but that costs money. This money is a cost which makes competing against unbacked entities tougher.

In most cases, you can not have 100% foolproof guarantees of anything. The closest I can think of is governments standing behind their banking institutions. Even there though, governments have defaulted on their guarantees.

The world is not a stable, perfect, and cut-and-dry place as many would like to believe. It is dynamic, and ultimately backed by trust.

It's much harder to mitigate this kind of risk in the world of services as against purchased software.

The problem has always been present especially when larger slower moving companies buy from smaller, riskier, companies.

In the days of software, code escrow was possible to mitigate some of this kind of risk. That's still got it's costs but can be an effective hedge against a supplier going bust.

A third party code escrow account with instructions on how to build the service and a contract that specifies conditions when a customer gets access to that escrow.

I've been on both the customer and service end of such agreements.

Is there a popular provider for doing this? It sounds like a lot of work to find a solution in which both parties trust (both technically versed and reliability wise). A common notary probably wouldn't cut it, right?

Both companies I’ve worked for - as a client and a customer - used Iron Mountain.

http://www.ironmountain.com/information-management/software-...

There's a bunch of companies doing it, some dedicated, some as part of larger related offerings. E.g. I know NCC Group (large IT security company) does offer it, TÜV (which does all kinds of certification and compliance work), ...

> and aren’t going anywhere

Yet... that you know of.

Nothing specific against Sift Science whatsoever in my comment, but many, many times this sentiment has been conveyed by companies and it rings hollow IMO. There are a lot of different ways a company can change or disappear at some unforeseen point in the future, and claims that "you can trust us to be here forever" do not carry much weight for the large group of experienced users, devs, management, etc who have been burned multiple times.

So are you implying that you should never enter into a business relationship with another company?

Clearly, you need to always be prepared for your partner to go away, but you still have to work with other companies.

I think the parent commenter is just saying that it's not something you can actually believe, just like a company saying they'll never sell your data.

Sure, that's the intention but when someone comes around waving a checkbook, they can in turn buy you and shut you down, sell your customers' info, etc. Sure, its not YOU allowing that to happen but by ceding control you essentially allowed that to happen.

"You can trust us to be here (until enough money comes our way)" is just how it is for most businesses like this. An unfortunate, and in my opinion largely unresolvable, side effect of an ecosystem where specific useful tools are hard enough to create and manage that full companies have to be formed around them.

Do you have a high level overview of what I’d need to do to get started? Are there any specific areas you specialise in as opposed to general users and what information will I need to share with you?

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