FounderSomeone deciding to buy from a new and unknown company

When I consider buying from a new company, I want a way to judge them, so I do not hand part of my work to a party that may close.

Khi tôi cân nhắc mua từ một công ty mới, tôi muốn đánh giá được họ, để không giao một phần công việc của mình cho một bên có thể đóng cửa.

Job context

There are no customers to ask
High
Because you are among the first.
Root cause: Evidence accumulates only after people have bought
No way to know how long the company lasts
High
And no way to ask directly.
Root cause: A private company's finances are not public
The product is missing a lot
High
And what is missing is promised as coming.
Root cause: A roadmap is a promise rather than a commitment
No support outside working hours
Medium
Because the company is a few people.
Root cause: A small team cannot staff continuous cover
A wrong choice is answerable to their own organisation
High
Choosing a large name draws no blame.
Root cause: The career risk of choosing a small party is markedly higher

A solution is not the same thing as a product, a customer can hire a behaviour or a workaround too.

Start with a small part of the work
Behaviour
The most effective way to bound the risk, bounding the value too.
Ask plainly how the company is funded
Behaviour
The most important question, and few buyers dare ask.
Require a data escrow clause
Product
Protects against the largest risk, and few small companies accept it.
Choose a large name to be safe
Behaviour
Safe for a career, discarding the thing that was needed.
Keep a direct line to the founder
Workaround
The real advantage of buying early, which disappears as the company grows.

Judging a company requires earlier customers to ask, and an early buyer is by definition someone with nobody before them.
Why existing solutions fail: The entire apparatus for judging suppliers rests on past evidence and has nothing to say about a company without a past, so early buyers invent their own methods, each differently.
Potential opportunity: Judging by tests that can be run now, one small real task, one hard question, rather than by history.
The early buyer carries the whole risk of an unproven company while the benefit, a market with another option, accrues to everyone who buys later.
Why existing solutions fail: In most organisations, choosing a large name and failing carries no blame while choosing a small one and failing has a name attached, so that asymmetry rather than product quality decides most choices.
Potential opportunity: Compensating early buyers with terms only they get, a price locked forever, a say in the roadmap, so the risk carries a price.