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Comment by 8note | Hacker News Reader

Looking in from geophysics, 3/4 lucrative customers for the 1 non-paying is not sustainable.

If you're looking for customers that don't intend to pay, is it 1/5 that end up paying well? 1/100? 9/10?

He's saying large companies that have money will pay you even if it's late. If you're doing work for Johnson and Johnson they are going to pay you. If you're doing work for John the attorney they might.

So look for work for Johnson and Johnson.

I don't know who the "non-paying" customers are. Don't do business with companies that might not pay.

When you say "delay on payables", do you mean not paying you for agreed-upon already-completed work, or do you mean not giving you new work right now?

I mean that some of your most lucrative clients will take forever to pay out invoices.

This is often deliberate. Postponing payment of invoices means you have at any given time a larger warchest to invest and gain an edge, or conversely have to pay more interest. CFOs often set a target and push back on swift payments. Some companies even risk lawsuits to be able to not pay the bill just yet, though it obviously depends on context what you can get away with and what harms your reputation too much.

This is just how large enterprises work. Nothing deliberate. They operate in longer cycles.

To give you an extreme example, I have worked as part of a team of consultants for various state owned companies in the past four years. They take up to six months to clear your payment but I have never ever seen them not pay and once you are in both the bureaucracy and the environment are so complex that given onboarding costs you get a steady amount of work for years.

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