To everyone saying they should do consulting, how can they they keep the IP rights then?

If they consult for another company, wouldn't that company own the rights?

From what I've seen, not many companies are willing to pay consulting fees and give up ownership of the work.

If you do consulting around a product, it's typical to exclude improvements to the actual product from any rights assignment clauses, potentially in exchange for better terms. So e.g. any integration on customer-side would be owned by the customer (or grant the customer lots of rights to it), but changes made to the service itself would not, but potentially be cheaper/come with included credits to use the service/...

But in this case their customers want specific features that would be integrated in their own SaaS product.

How would that work, am I misunderstanding something?

Not necessarily they same customers as the ones that already have made feature demands (ideally you'd find more while doing this!), or if them, then consult on the entire integration, not just the features in the app they requested.

I get it the consulting on the integration but on the features, the first customers that request a particular feature would own the code for it.

No, that you would exclude in the contract so you keep it. If and to what terms of course depends on the specific case, as a new startup you'll have to give something.

Forgive my ignorance but if a buyer indicates interest, is it ok for the seller to ask for a LOI?

Or if the buyer doesn't mention it explicitly, does it mean that they're not serious enough?

Who should mention the first amount of money first, buyer or seller?

What does "changes" mean in this context and what constitutes a reasonable reverse break-up fee?

Also in #2, does "probe interest" mean getting them to sign a LOI?

> What does "changes" mean in this context and what constitutes a reasonable reverse break-up fee?

It's unlikely whatever the buyer throws over the wall first is exactly what you want to sign.

> Also in #2, does "probe interest" mean getting them to sign a LOI?

If company A approaches you, wanting to acquire you, you want to really quickly figure out if company B, company C, and company D are interested before you commit to a period of exclusivity with A.

Thanks!

> If company A approaches you, wanting to acquire you, you want to really quickly figure out if company B, company C, and company D are interested before you commit to a period of exclusivity with A.

Let's say that company A, B and C are interested (with A being interested the most), what would be the next step? Can you get an offer without a LOI?

Is there any forum or group that has people that can advise on such matters?

I know HN is one but it's too big/too impersonal for this.

I mean a place for founders to find "mentors" (i.e. people with more experience or people that have done similar things before) that would be willing to help them with things as a sale to a big company or how to structure a deal.

There’s a global peer group called Entrepreneurs Organization I’ve been part of for five years that satisfies this for me. It’s for founders/owners with $1m+ in revenue. 14,000 members around the world broken up into smaller chapters. The NYC chapter has 200 members, for instance. eonetwork.org

YPO is another one, though for larger companies ($8+ million in revenue).

I'm in a program in NYC called https://www.venwise.com/, it's a moderated CxO peer group that meets for a long session every month and does exactly this.

Thanks.

Anything in London?

Funnily enough, WeWork Labs