Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sixtypoundhound 2387 days ago
Indeed. From what I can tell, it sounds like an e-commerce company is bifurcating into:

- A B2C Shopify store, with the former traffic / audience

- Some kind of e-commerce platform (not yet a business)

To your point, if they were not already actively trying to market the code as a platform, this is an EXTREMELY hard reset for the second project and your best hope (if you're going to continue this path) is negotiate an acqui-hire.

Speaking as an investor again, the commercial side of the second project sounds like a potential goat rodeo. You're basically dealing with the sales cycle for selling a B2B infrastructure product (specialty e-commerce backbone) to small companies...

Guessing at the market size, you would need an average installed price north of $5 K to make a business viable which means you need a B2B outside sales team. Given that you're selling to startups, suspect getting above $100 K ticket price is a challenge. Strong likelihood of issues with customer acquisition costs > contribution margin.

Again... hand waving BS about the business I haven't seen, but much caution would be advised. The other guy definitely grabbed the crown jewels of the remaining business.