I have a small company (only me, and hire developers on a project to project basis) and I will have soon completed a software product that will help a lot of oil companies (FYI: doing this on request from oil company employees, not just guesswork). I want my tiny company to be the supplier for the big corps, but I am afraid that the structure of my company, size, etc., will be an issue for bigger companies as they've got rules and regulations when doing deals, but with cloud technology I imagine there is an opportunity here. How do I go about this? Am I destined to sell my software to a huge IT corp and just get royalties?
This also implicitly handles all manner if random details like...
1) Packaging + Shipping your software to people.
2) IP (Intellectual Property) protection. If you ship your code to someone + the market is lucrative enough, your code will be reversed engineered by anyone smart enough to notice your niche + your software.
3) SAAS runs in every browser + every OS... well... if you have good coders. Better said, you should only pay your coders based on performance + first payment contingency is code should run in browsers running on Linux + OSX + Windoze.
4) You can always ensure people have the latest version of your software, so you fix bugs + roll out fixes to your code base, so you always know what version of code clients are running when they open a trouble ticket.
5) International shipping cost. Related to #1 + keep in mind about the cheapest you can ship 16oz anywhere is $30 USD, so if you do ship product, ensure you figure in this amount.
6) International shipping paperwork. One of my companies is a Super Food company which ships from the US to many other countries. We only ship overseas product through Freight Forwarders. These companies take care of all the paperwork, which can take 1-4 hours per shipment to fill out for some jurisdictions. Also, oil + gas software may fall under all manner of Government restrictions, based on code you include. If you use a Freight Forwarder, all this nonsense consideration pushes to buyer + Freight Forwarder.
So you're shipping product from the US to Finland, you'll only be responsible for shipping product to the US Freight Forwarder where your Finish client has setup their account.
I suggest MyUS.com as I've used since around 2003 with great success.
Another paperwork trick. If the country you ship to requires a commercial invoice (for various products so countries do, some don't) require you client to provide you with the exact commercial invoice they'd like include in their shipment.
If you write the wrong thing on a commercial invoice, your client will receive a "burn bill", instead of what they ordered.
Burn Bill - bill customs generates to cover whatever was required to destroy your product.
Always only include commercial invoices generated by clients. They will likely know better what's required for their customs to ensure package delivery.
7) Access control. SAAS delivery allows you to control how many people access a given "seat" to your product.
Answered 7 years ago
Access 20,000+ Startup Experts, 650+ masterclass videos, 1,000+ in-depth guides, and all the software tools you need to launch and grow quickly.
Already a member? Sign in