Do enterprise level companies copy ideas they get pitched on? | Hacker News Reader

Do enterprise level companies copy ideas they get pitched on?

2 pointstimhargis3 comments

Launching a SAAS and we'll be going the enterprise white label route. Our clients are big real estate brands, big MLM's, large franchises, etc. Their independent "agents, distributors, franchisees, etc." use our platform under the main brand and we do a revenue share with the company itself for every dollar their independent agents are billed for the service. My concern is these companies with deep pockets hearing about this idea when we approach them with an idea which hasn't been done before and thinking they will just build it on their own. I realize this isn't their core competency and is outside of their main business but still a concern I had. It would obviously take them alot of time and capital to build it, but enterprise level clients could definitely do it and probably come net ahead from a revenue standpoint. What are your experiences when selling to larger clients and having them license your technology? Would they rather just not deal with it and license it similar to how they use other vendors they do business with or seriously contemplate actually replicating it?

In a worst case scenario, I've seen PMs at a large company that was building an internal tool for its own use watch pitches by startups who ran white-label products with the same functionality. They did it to see if there was a better solution and if there wasn't they still got ideas on things that maybe should be included in their product. In the end, execution and scarce internal resources meant the final internal product was far worse than market options, so I wouldn't worry about that.

Now, the fun part is that not too long ago I actually joined that big scary company that could have been a competitor to start pushing internal startup opportunities for new revenue models and products i was considering. I reached SVP level execs, and saw how political winds above the VP level blew whatever meaningful thing got in their way without recourse. Compared to running with my own startup, that type of intrapreneurship felt like walking through a tar-pit. If it requires political approval and funding your "enemy" PM will likely have to fight a harder battle than you.

Make your product as good as it gets and you win, regardless of how many competitors know about it.

Look at this from the other angle, how many examples are there of smaller companies growing large by supplying saas to larger companies.

Look at the customer list of basecamp, any of their large enterprise customers could have built their own pm service, they didn't. Look at salesforce, how many companies could have built their own contact management system, they didn't. Wordpress, yammer, the list goes on and on. As long as you've got the right business model, you'll be fine.

Good point - that's what I was thinking but didn't want to be naive. I thought this night be different because this actually makes them money and I didn't know if that would influence them more to say "oh shit, we can make another 30% if we had this ourselves." This might only strengthen our position though. Thanks for the insight.

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