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Comment by mark-r | Hacker News Reader

Your relationship with your customer(s) should be your number one priority. With a 1 year head start you should be the premier option, it would be interesting to find out what caused this defection. If you strongarm them back to you, what will be the long-term consequences?

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I have a five year contract with my customer, that guarantees a level of income, so I am not worried about that. Plus, the payout is really nice if they cancel my contract, so that is not something that I am that worried about.

Also, I am not sure whether I want to be doing this in the long term. I am 38 now, so that is not what worries me.

If you have a guaranteed 5-year contract, and aren't sure if you want to be in it long-term past that, do you gain anything by killing them? It sounds like your income level for the next 5 years is basically assured regardless of whether they enter this space or not, if I'm reading correctly.

Yes, however there is something like a commission/bonus that is associated with the work too, so depending on how much my company is working, we get more revenues above the guaranteed level of income.

Personally I would go back to your client and stress that I would rather collaborate but that multiple attempts to contact them have failed, ask the client if they would be willing to act as an agent to foster collaboration. If the client agrees and gets rebuffed then you can go back to the client and have them kill the contract. This way the client sees that you acted in good faith to provide your client with the best possible scenario and that it was the other company that would not play ball. At which point the client will fully understand that you have to protect your interests and tried to uphold his interest in doing so.

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