This is mostly idle speculation since there's a 99% chance of me never being organised enough to get any of my business ideas off the ground... but if you were to start a business (eg. one that offers a better assessment method for government to track planning targets), what if any, protections could you build into it to ensure it keept functioning after it leaves your hands and to reassure potential uptakes it's not just going to become another overpriced-non delivering scheme as soon as it has the signups investors wanted?

    1. Start with a reasonable and sustainable revenue model from day 1. If the software is useless without ongoing support and constant updates, or it requires backend services that you need to maintain (for example, to update to match changes in state laws), that should be a subscription model. If the software is something completely standalone that you can purchase once and not need to have major updates for a long time, it should be a one time purchase model with optional support contracts and a clear idea of free and discounted update entitlement.
    2. Keep the company private as long as possible, ideally forever.
    3. Make sure the company owns no IP - all of that goes into a separate licensing company with a separate board of trustees and standing orders to pull the plug if the management of the first company becomes hostile to company values. The IP holding company would open source everything should the main company fail or enshittify.
    4. Adopt open formats for data wherever possible, and provide data format documentation and open sourced import/export tools for anything where you have to adopt your own format.
    5. Make the exit strategy a transition to employee ownership, rather than a transition to being publicly traded.
    parent

  • You'd give full and uncompromising legal guarantees that you're allowed to do anything with everything in the entire product. You'd open up hardware and software schematics and source. You'd adhere to rigid international standards and protocols. You'd make the product repairable in its entirety. You'd welcome competition for everything because you'd be confident enough that your costumers choose you because you're the best, and not just the only option.

    parent

  • I guess buy it once and repair it mentality is the opposite of pay monthly and we’ll keep “improving it.”

    I’m on some subs like that r/buyitforlife that share ideas about products that are quality made and last.

    parent