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Comment by throwawaaarrgh | Hacker News Reader

No mention of the cost of regulation? Getting compliance with federal and DoD standards can take a small team and months of work, even if you hire a consultant to walk you through it. The investment just to get to the table is high, although you can try to walk the dangerous line of paying lip service and hoping nobody calls you on your shit

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I think it depends on the stage you're at. I have helped companies get FedRamp, soc 2 type 1 and 2 and into govcloud marketplace in less than 6 months. I would argue the more expensive part is proving compliance rather than becoming compliant, especially if it's an early startup with a small team and without too much written in stone.

Oh sure. But if the startup doesn't know it's gonna take $MONTHS and $DOLLARS and $HEADCOUNT of non-business-value engineering just to get compliance, that's money and time they may not have

The ability to torpedo your entire business by signing the wrong requirement is unparallelled for this reason. Indeed, it's often used maliciously.

Here. Pour a drink. Let me tell you a story.

UltraWag, a supplier, signs a contract from MegaWing, a big aircraft OEM, for 2000 UltraWag SuperRadio units at 12k per unit. Under the contract deliverables, MegaWing gets all UltraWing tech data in this specific BIN format. UltraWag business development signs up for this 24M contract, thinking, "we can make BIN all day long, no problem".

Yeah, they should have asked someone with a technical degree.

The UltraWag dev group dips its toe into the BIN spec, and sees that it's impenetrable. They get on the horn with the reps at MegaWing.

MegaWing says, oh, yeah, of _course_ you need help with getting MegaBIN spooled up. Let's get you set up with the MegaWing MegaBIN SDK, the MegaWing MegaBIN IDE, and the MegaWing MegaBIN build tool. That's 1.8M worth of software, so discount the SuperRadio unit cost by a thousand bucks or so. UltraWag signs off, and on they go.

Now, this doesn't solve a lot of the problem. The MegaWing SDK needs configuration, the build system only works for OS2/Warp. MegaWing sends some experts down to UltraWag, 5 consultants at 100/hr for two weeks. That's 40k, another hundred bucks off the unit price. This happens again, with an SDK change and an IDE change.

And now, we've got a problem.

The problem here is that the SuperRadio 12k unit cost has a margin of 12%, or $1440. The initial MegaWing software discount already took a huge chunk out of that, and after a very few consultations the SuperRadio is now getting sold at a loss. UltraWag owes MegaWing money for giving them product.

UltraWag might confront MegaWing about this, to which MegaWing might respond[1], "Sure, but now you have 𝐌𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐖𝐢𝐧𝐠'𝐬 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐲-𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐁𝐈𝐍 𝐒𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞 to use as you please!"

Sure, you have these new tools . . with the MegaWing SDK, the MegaWing IDE, the MegaWing build, the MegaWing everything. It can't be used for anything else. In effect, MegaWing just paid for a product with dollars that can only be spent with MegaWing. This is not a transaction. It's colonialism.

[1] Chock full of their own importance to the cosmos.

> Estonia based startup

But also, publicly complaining about your clients is not a good move for a startup.

One of the cases where fpunder qualification should absolutely include industry experience.

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