Ask HN: As an individual developer, how to sell your software to a big company?

[soulisonfire]

I have developed a good stack of software and I have a working prototype. There are 2-3 competitors out there but this stack is much ahead in features set.

It was fun developing this project since it's inception. My initial goal was to go startup way.

But its been a long run for me (finances) and currently I lack sufficient energies to push ahead.

How can I make most of this stack from where I stand ?

Have a list of small-medium-big companies who might be interested.

And of big five, have emails of teams/managers who are in slightly similar space.

Should I reach out to them directly ? I am trying to weigh best options.

Pls advise.

PS: I don't live in US.

[coinjobber]

Three things:

- Do you have real IP/patents? If not, a "working prototype" is probably going to be hard to sell.

- What specific business problem does it solve, and who is the person with the budget who is trying to solve it. Reach out to them. A "team" trying to solve a similar problem is never going to buy a solution (manager will no longer have a team...).

- Alternative to selling is to offer to do contract work for these companies, using prototype to help close the deal.

[soulisonfire]

IP/Patents ? no.

What it solves ? it is efficient, saves man hours and can make existing platform attractive.

Team solving never going to buy solution ? Hmm yes and I fear they might just get their team to work on it.

Contract work ? I will consider. But how can I ensure they are not going to just know/copy my idea and build it in house. Having a knowledgeable engineer in a meeting is sufficient to understand where lies the guts of my software.

[nunobrito]

Sorry to say this, you don't have a negotiation position.

At worse, they will fool you thinking they will buy something, just to extract the deeper details and then think they can do it on their own as you mention. Happens often.

Best bet is being hired to join their team, albeit I'm not sure how pleasant that would be for you. If you see a company/manager that you want to join, this might be a good opportunity.

In either case, your intuition will be the best help. If you don't feel you can trust someone you are negotiating on this topic, very likely you won't get a good outcome.

[landon32]

re: contract work, the reason why they would hire you instead of put an employee on it is that you will be able to get it done faster and will probably do a better job.

Sure, they could have one of their employees do it, but that would take that employee's time (and therefore the company's money). They don't necessarily save money by having an employee do it. Imagine that finishing this software on a contractor basis would take you 200 hours. It would take the employee 400 hours because the employee needs to familiarize herself with the idea, and maybe pick up a new technology or something. It's probably cheaper for the company to have you do it in half the time, even if your hourly rate is higher than their employee's.