We're negotiating a deal with a large service provider here (South Africa), which will leave my new startup in charge of their reseller network.<p>It will make us instantly very profitable, <i>but</i> we still believe what we're offering them is worth more than what they paying. Unfortunately the way our system is designed we would only be able to sign one ISP <i>per country</i>.<p>On the up side, closing this deal will land us enough money (fully bootstrapped so far) to get the system ready for a full launch internationally, and give us a case study to show how we assisted this service provider in order to sell our service to other providers internationally.<p>On the down side, its probably a permanent deal. We're negotiating around a two year contract, but unfortunately our system will likely be tied into offering their services at the end of the two years. Having multiple service providers will complicate our system too much for the end users, and once they have their reseller network using us we can't really kick them off.<p>Anyone here have any related experience or advice?<p>* The two year deal is a little less than we wanted, but its the best we're going to get at this point in time. The alternative is starting our own ISP to exploit our system, which we have actually done - but running two startups is starting to get crazy.<p>* We would likely want to raise the percentage share we receive after the two year period, however if they refuse to sign we might even land up with less than initial contract amount -- this is if they determine we can't actually change providers.<p>* Would having a deal in South Africa likely affect our ability to sell at the end of the day? We'll never be able to sign a full global deal.