Can preorders work for software-as-a-service companies?

You know that when folks like game companies sell preorders they're not actually taking and spending your money, right? Usually it's a token amount like $5 that just serves to make the customer invested in the product to make them much more likely to come back and purchase it when it's ready. They'll also happily refund your $5 or whatever if you change your mind or the product is late, etc.

Dinging a bunch of credit cards for full value and then spending that money to develop what you've already sold could easily turn ugly. I can't tell exactly what your product is, but assuming there is actual code behind it - software is hard and frequently takes a lot more work than you expect.

I'm not saying it won't turn out fine - but if you're simply looking to validate your product then i think it'd be really wise to keep 100% of that pre-order money segregated, unspent and available for no questions asked refunds.

Have you experimented with any sort of feature-request pre-order tier where the entities that pre-order early have direct say in what gets built? I know that you're obviously building for them, but is there any way to stroke their ego and make that part of the package?

As always, happy to answer any questions!