Signed partnership but the parner restricts us from any publicity. What to do? | Hacker News Reader

Signed partnership but the parner restricts us from any publicity. What to do?

3 pointszaheddec6 comments

Hello all,

We are a startup in edtec spear. Recently we got into partnership with one of the biggest companies in India for post exam reports. As a part of the contract they dont want us to use their name anywhere without their permission. As it's our first client or partner we decided to sign it.

When we asked for a press release on the partnership they denied it. As a startup it's important for us but we are bound with the contract.

Any suggestion or advice on how to approach this situation would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

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Don’t use their name. It’s against the contract and even without the contract, it’s bad form without chatting with the client first (consider just the NDA...). Not to mention they’re big, your small, you can’t afford the legal trouble.

Instead you might say in a sales call the type of companies you’re working for. When I worked as a consultant we might not say “Careerbuilder” was a client, instead we’d say “one of the top 5 job search companies in the US”.

And future protip: don’t undervalue yourself in contract negotiations. If you truly offer something unique and valuable, don’t give it up without serious due consideration.

Thank you so much for such an insightful suggestions. We learned a lot during the process. As its our first client we ignored some obvious things. In future we will definitely take a stand for ourselves.

Also will rephrase our wording to mention the client.

Are there any suggestions on how to tell this to an investor?

Find out what they will give permission for. Maybe a logo on your site or maybe just in a private pitch deck?

Thanks for the suggestion.

As its a white label service they dont want us to use their logos or names on any of the public platforms at this stage. Mailed for permitting to use on private pitch deck. Let's see what comes up.

thanks again for the quick response.

I wouldn’t use their logo or their name, anywhere. Not in any internal documents, not in any supposedly private pitch decks, not anywhere.

They can remain “one of the leading firms in XYZ” forever, at least as far as anything goes that is recorded anywhere.

And I would be careful about verbally saying their name too.

What you do for your first client when trying to sign up more clients, will speak volumes to those additional prospective clients for how you will treat their names and data once they sign up.

So, don’t ever give away the name of that first client. And don’t ever give away the names of any other clients who also request anonymity. After all, who wants to sign up for white label service from a company who blabs about who their clients are?

Thanks for the great input.

You made a great point about white label service and that explained a lot about how deal with this.

We were just worried about what to tell when reach investors.

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