Ask HN: Help Reassure SaaS Clients as Solo Founder
Hi HN, I'm a solo founder in the early stages of bootstrapping a SaaS company where my product, if adopted by a company, becomes a critical part of their daily workflow.
Understandably, one of the most common push backs I get from potential customers is "what happens when you get hit by a bus". So far I don't have a great answer for them and I'd love to hear how others have overcome this sales hurdle.
Obviously finding a co-founder or getting to the point where I can hire someone else is ideal, but neither of those look likely to happen in the near future. I can also offer to give them access to the AWS account their service is hosted under, but these clients generally don't have tech saavy employees and so I'm not sure how useful that would be to them (of course they can hire someone to help, but that might take them days or weeks).
I'll be extremely grateful for any ideas or advice anyone can give me.
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I'm in a similar situation, and it occurs to me that this is a good question. For our thing, part of the answer is that the code itself is all Open Source, which partly mitigates the "bus factor" risk, in that they could always pay somebody else to stand up an environment running the system, or do it themselves.
If you don't want to make things OSS, you could engage with a 3rd party "code escrow" firm that would maintain the code securely and only release it to the customer in defined circumstances (eg, if you die, or the company closes down, etc.)
One other might be partnering with a VAR outfit or an outsourced help-desk/support firm to provide services and support that are independent of your physical presence.