[singleauroa]

Hey @all since I have seen this kind of comment a couple of times I would like to address it in more detail:

"If you take extra funding and hire people just to meet their needs, you no longer have a SaaS. You are writing a custom product for this large customer, with explicit permission to try to sell it to other people too. But this big player will be driving everything, as if you do not do what they say, they can walk and your business collapses. That does not necessarily mean it is the wrong choice - if you are not growing otherwise, and this is a path to keep it alive, it makes a ton of sense. But if you are growing and these guys are just a jumpstart to bigger ARR, it might be a mistake."

=> I realized that I can easily build the features myself and don't need to hire extra staff. I might need one contractor that could do some last-step safety checks but that's it. In terms of building extra features just for them: Besides the enterprise standards such as SSO and the apparent need for data isolation all the other requested features are on the roadmap.

My business right now is not really growing anywhere and this customer could essentially spark the engine. The reason for this is that there's actually another almost equally as large company that wanted to use my app but had to decline for the exact same lack of enterprise features (mainly the security part)

What I am concerned about is that they want some sort of support plan and an SLA which all seem intimidating at first glance as I have no idea how to properly price it so that I am not a slave just to their needs, you know?

[everybodyknows]

> they want some sort of support plan ...

Unless this is at a high hourly rate, with a cap on number of hours, I'd be worried.

> ... and an SLA

A Service Level Agreement -- with penalties for non-performance? Sounds like a path for demanding whatever they want from you, under threat of litigation.

From your earlier comment: "there's actually another almost equally as large company". Consider approaching again that company, see if they're still interested. If so, work up a plan to sell to both. Tell both you have another (large, unnamed) potential customer, and ask for advice.

Then, both will want to make sure that the other cannot get into a position to "own" you, because it would damage your ability to respond to their own needs.

I would also evaluate both companies for risk of replacing your product with some "clean-room" re-implementation of their own.

Bona fides of my own: None, except that I'm building a SaaS with a similar business profile.