TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

Ask HN: How do you cancel your startup, after adoption?

2 pointsby TDiblikover 2 years ago
Everybody always talks about how to start&#x2F;build your startup, however, once you&#x27;ve built something, people start to adopt it, and you realize it&#x27;s loosing money, how do you undo it?<p>Some background: I&#x27;m about to start building a startup, because I&#x27;m fairly certain that one of the companies, in that space is going to crash in about 2-3 years. I would really like to take their customers from them (customers == organizations, about 30, I&#x27;m certain that about 10 of these are willing to pay for my software). They&#x27;re (crashing org) making a software which requires updates like once or twice per year, due to legislation changing. Since, they&#x27;re going to crash, or at least discontinue their product, organizations that purchased this product, have about half a year to adopt a new solution. My software is going to require same HW as their&#x27;s does, so there&#x27;s no upfront cost for these organizations. Switching to another HW is a question of about $15k in total, and 2 months of work. I&#x27;ve decided to label the software as SAAS (self-hosted, can&#x27;t decide between monthly&#x2F;yearly payments), since competition does this as well. My problem is that this competition is a corportation that can offer price around 10x lower than mine. Basically what I would like to ask per month (monetarily), they ask per year, since they operate at big scale.<p>My question: Let&#x27;s say, that organizations, in need of my new software (about 10 at least) adopt it. I don&#x27;t know if I will be able to acquire new customers (since the corporation can offer better pricing, support, everything). However, once those companies adopt my new software and I realize that it&#x27;s not worth it, how do I undo my work? I&#x27;m really scared that I will be unable to acquire new customers, and eventually have to maintain this old money-loosing software. If I just decide one day, to not continue developing this product, can&#x27;t they sue me?<p>PS: Is HN a place to ask these kinds of question? If not, where should I ask?<p>Thanks in advance.

1 comment

O__________Oover 2 years ago
If you’re that concerned, talk to an attorney on how to structure the business and contracts based on your specific situation.<p>Basically, have legal entity, legally maintain it, don’t be negligent, don’t commit fraud, and have legally enforceable termination clause in your contracts.
评论 #32871886 未加载