[stuven]

A startup (series A-B) I worked for was basically a thin wrapper providing physical goods around the core features of a delivery SaaS (series A) - our core features were so entwined with theirs that when they went belly-up, we panicked and bought their source code for an ungodly sum. Then we took over hosting their product for just ourselves, and so had to learn how to run _their_ software too. It was written in a different language than most of our engineers knew, and had pretty much no documentation. We didn't know enough about their software to fix new bugs easily as they came up, and didn't have enough `people * time` to figure out enough to fix the old ones.

Entwining our business with theirs was a good way to get off the ground. But when they crashed they nearly took us with them.

[onmobile2022]

This is a great parable in the making, something something depending on vendor APIs

[rapind]

Not always a bad thing though. I know the Stripe connect API so well at this point I could move payment processing in house based on their data structures and save money on fees.

[hinkley]

Did you end up making money off that product line?

I’ve worked at a couple places where the business folk sold our product below cost, and some of our customers built their whole roadmap around us, while we quietly ran out of money.

Without the middleman, you maybe pulled it off.

[stuven]

We eventually straightened things out enough that the product ran on its own, but when I left there were plans on the backburner to replace it. Not sure how the financials worked out there in the end!