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by zaroth
4088 days ago
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I think the headline sums up the confusion. Selling (as in taking cash in exchange for the product) a prototype or mockup as-if it were the real thing would be fraud. Demoing a prototype or demoing features which are not fully fleshed out is not. The entire Lean startup movement and concept of the MVP is to test your product idea in the market, in front of real customers, before investing too much time trying to build something no one wants. I thinks its OK to focus the discussion on features, benefits, etc if you can get in front of potential customers. It should not be long before they ask about pricing and availability. That's when you simply say you think it will be ready by date X. Take for example the email assistant AI startup X.ai. They say in their FAQ that "Amy" is human assisted. For all we know Amy is 100% humans booking your appointments and the algorithm is total vapor. It's not unethical to do this, as long as customers are not expecting some guarantee of no human intervention (e.g I sell you an instance of Amy I claim lives on your desktop, but requests are actually sent over the network for humans to do the work) If you have a black box in your demo where data goes in and magic comes out, and you say "This is actually taking the input and generating the output in realtime right now" you are sticking your neck out and it's likely to get chopped. Building a new customer relationship on a lie like that would be a mistake. But depending on the specifics it's a calculated risk; if the black box is completely do-able but just not yet quite done, then I think hard coding results in a mockup is time-honored, wide spread and perfectly ethical. But when they ask about availability you've A) confirmed market interest, and B) you state not all of the features are ready but you are expecting to ship on Date X. |
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A problem I have with what you wrote is it's all well and good to answer the availability question honestly if it comes up but that doesn't (for me) address the issue that I don't feel my founder is being 100% transparent when the customer convos begin. We are demoing something to customers and they aren't being told that it's just a prototype up front.
Is there a reason he can't say it's a prototype? I get somebody might not be interested in a prototype but isn't the customer going to lose interest when we say that it's going to be 6 months before the products are available anyway?
Another reason I feel uneasy is that we can't even start to build what we prototyped without the funding. If that falls through we are screwed so how can our founder honestly give a Date X with any certainty without the money in the bank?
Edit: also having been in sales/bizdev for years I think "selling" is the process of offering something for sale. It's not just the moment where you accept the money and provide the product/service. Maybe this is where the problem is. I just can't seem to get comfortable asking somebody to consider buying a product that doesn't exist without telling them up front that it doesn't exist yet. That's bait and switch to me.