[ethicalornot]

Thanks for your comment.

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.