A client wants to buy old SaaS app – smart move or risk?

5 points by AbbeyRoadRunner 17 hours ago

We’re a small software house that’s been developing a niche SaaS platform for cultural events over the past 15 years. The product works well, but we were thinking to rebuild it for the next year.

Recently, a well-known national brand — not in tech, but operating in retail — approached us. As part of their PR strategy, they run a medium-sized cultural festival once a year in their home country.

They want to use our platform — but with a hard no to licensing. They’ve had bad past experiences where vendors either raised prices or disappeared, leaving them stranded.

We’re currently in a bidding process, alongside other companies. From what we understand, most competitors are creative agencies likely to: • build something from scratch, or • white-label past projects from similar events.

We estimate that building this kind of event app from scratch would cost around $60,000.

The options we’ve considered so far are:

1. Give them a snapshot of our current codebase, with no support, onboarding, or guarantees. This isn’t ideal — they would need to hire someone else to burn time understanding the architecture and logic before they could even begin implementing or customizing it. It’s slow and wasteful, considering we already know the product inside-out. 2. Give them a snapshot of the code and charge separately for the extra features they’ve asked for (that we don’t yet support). Based on our estimates, development would cost them between $13,500 (optimistic) and $38,000 (pessimistic) if done externally. 3. Same as above, but instead of giving them the code directly, we place it in escrow with a law firm of their choice. If we go out of business, or suddenly triple our rates to lock them in, they’d have the right to release the source and continue working with another vendor. This gives them peace of mind without requiring a full transfer up front.

*Ask HN: What would you do in our shoes?* Any strategic, technical, or legal insights are welcome. Has anyone navigated something similar?

csomar 5 hours ago

I don't know about your circumstances but if I was small, I would completely disregard this.

> We’re currently in a bidding process, alongside other companies. From what we understand, most competitors are creative agencies likely to: • build something from scratch, or • white-label past projects from similar events.

They are not interested in you. They just reached out to platforms to do price/feature/whatever discovery. They might decide on one of them, go with a friend or do nothing.

Do you want to expand time on this? Again, I don't know about your circumstances and don't have much info beyond what you are giving us but I wouldn't.

eschneider 17 hours ago

You're going to HAVE to give them support, if only to get them setup. Think long and hard if selling this sort of on-prem version of your product makes sense for YOU. If not, it's likely going to be an expensive distraction and just tell the customer no, you don't sell and support product X that way.

They very likely will be back and if not, no hard feelings.

  • AbbeyRoadRunner 16 hours ago

    It does have much sense what you say. So 1. is off the table.

    What I am pondering on is how much is worth the IP or to take it from another angle - how much should I charge for it as it's ready now (so we can ship it tomorrow vs. they have to wait for development) + it has been tested in the field so most of QA phase is gone.

    • nivertech 2 hours ago

      1. Just agree to not raise the prices above some inflation-linked index.

      2. Giving commercial project AS-IS without support is a no-no, and might be illegal in some jurisdictions.

      3. Sell them a bank of on-prem support hours.