Think some of you would know something about this...
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I have written this application a year or so ago when I was in uni and now a company has approached me and is interested in sort of buying this application. There are some changes that might have to be done to adapt it to their environment but my problem is, I have no idea how much to charge them as I've never done this before. How would you guys go about it, are there any price ranges that certain applications are within? I don't want to give them a price and they will be thinking no way thats far too high but on the other hand I don't want to give them a real low price that would make it look cheap or something. I'd appreciate any opinions on this!
D-Way wrote:
are there any price ranges that certain applications are within?
Only on crowded markets. If your application is unique, even if in only one very important feature, don't look at competitors.
D-Way wrote:
How would you guys go about it,
Common rules are:
- How much it is worth for them? If it's a company, they probably have some business use for it. It will likely save money (or, less likely, increase their income). How much? Even if your application is a simple "Hello World", and they'll get $1bi with it, you can safely get at least $0.5bi with it.
- If there are competitors, put your price tag at 20% less than the most expensive one. You don't have any reason to be cheap, unless your software is really bad.
- No matter which price you define, they'll buy it for less.
- When bargaining, don't drop your price less than 15% or 20% or they may think you're not serious and that your initial price was too high. If they insist on more than 20%, tell them it costs you a lot, and make it clear that you won't go ahead unless they give you something in exchange (be creative, ask for less code changes, or something for writing the changes).
D-Way wrote:
I don't want to give them a price and they will be thinking no way thats far too high
No matter which price you say, they'll say and act like it's too high, unless they are incredibly naive, so you'll never really know.
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D-Way wrote:
I have written this application a year or so ago when I was in uni
You might want to first check with your university regarding selling work you did as a student for them. Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh SmithMarc Clifton wrote:
You might want to first check with your university regarding selling work you did as a student for them.
How would they have any ownership to anything he wrote while at uni? Do you think the nameless corporation is wanting to buy one of his answers to a uni assignment?
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash 24/04/2004
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Marc Clifton wrote:
You might want to first check with your university regarding selling work you did as a student for them.
How would they have any ownership to anything he wrote while at uni? Do you think the nameless corporation is wanting to buy one of his answers to a uni assignment?
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash 24/04/2004
Michael Martin wrote:
How would they have any ownership to anything he wrote while at uni?
Marc's right. What if he wrote it on university computers? I think this kind of thing has happened before. Jeez, it's common for employers to get staff to sign away anything they think up, even at home on their own time on their own computers, it wouldn't surprise me to see universities start to try the same thing.
0 bottles of beer on the wall, 0 bottles of beer, you take 1 down, pass it around, 4294967295 bottles of beer on the wall. Awasu 2.2.3 [^]: A free RSS/Atom feed reader with support for Code Project.
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Michael Martin wrote:
How would they have any ownership to anything he wrote while at uni?
Marc's right. What if he wrote it on university computers? I think this kind of thing has happened before. Jeez, it's common for employers to get staff to sign away anything they think up, even at home on their own time on their own computers, it wouldn't surprise me to see universities start to try the same thing.
0 bottles of beer on the wall, 0 bottles of beer, you take 1 down, pass it around, 4294967295 bottles of beer on the wall. Awasu 2.2.3 [^]: A free RSS/Atom feed reader with support for Code Project.
Taka Muraoka wrote:
Marc's right. What if he wrote it on university computers? I think this kind of thing has happened before. Jeez, it's common for employers to get staff to sign away anything they think up, even at home on their own time on their own computers, it wouldn't surprise me to see universities start to try the same thing.
Employers put that sort of thing in the contract that the employee signs. Uni's don't have an equivalent, at least didn't see it when I started Uni.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash 24/04/2004
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Taka Muraoka wrote:
Marc's right. What if he wrote it on university computers? I think this kind of thing has happened before. Jeez, it's common for employers to get staff to sign away anything they think up, even at home on their own time on their own computers, it wouldn't surprise me to see universities start to try the same thing.
Employers put that sort of thing in the contract that the employee signs. Uni's don't have an equivalent, at least didn't see it when I started Uni.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash 24/04/2004
Michael Martin wrote:
Uni's don't have an equivalent, at least didn't see it when I started Uni.
Me too, but I went to uni rather a long time ago :-) It's getting more and more common for people to start companies young, maybe when they're at university, and I'm sure the unis want to make sure they get their slice of the pie if they go onto big things, using ideas and technology that they perhaps developed using university facilities and resources. I'm sure I've read about this kind of thing happening already e.g. Stanford were assigned the patent for PageRank[^] because Page & Brin were students there at the time.
0 bottles of beer on the wall, 0 bottles of beer, you take 1 down, pass it around, 4294967295 bottles of beer on the wall. Awasu 2.2.3 [^]: A free RSS/Atom feed reader with support for Code Project.
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I have written this application a year or so ago when I was in uni and now a company has approached me and is interested in sort of buying this application. There are some changes that might have to be done to adapt it to their environment but my problem is, I have no idea how much to charge them as I've never done this before. How would you guys go about it, are there any price ranges that certain applications are within? I don't want to give them a price and they will be thinking no way thats far too high but on the other hand I don't want to give them a real low price that would make it look cheap or something. I'd appreciate any opinions on this!
D-Way wrote:
I have written this application a year or so ago when I was in uni and now a company has approached me and is interested in sort of buying this application. There are some changes that might have to be done to adapt it to their environment but my problem is, I have no idea how much to charge them as I've never done this before. How would you guys go about it, are there any price ranges that certain applications are within?
1. Estimate how much time a professional programmer would have spent for that work (of course, including design and specification). 2. Multiply the hours with the hourly rate of a car mechanic. 3. Give max. 30% discount in the course of serious negotiations. That's it! :cool: P.S. The FF spell checker is cool, except that i doesn't know the word spellchecker. :-D
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I have written this application a year or so ago when I was in uni and now a company has approached me and is interested in sort of buying this application. There are some changes that might have to be done to adapt it to their environment but my problem is, I have no idea how much to charge them as I've never done this before. How would you guys go about it, are there any price ranges that certain applications are within? I don't want to give them a price and they will be thinking no way thats far too high but on the other hand I don't want to give them a real low price that would make it look cheap or something. I'd appreciate any opinions on this!
Find out what exact changes they need. Then analyze the changes to break them down into small enough changes that you can estimate how long each specific small change will take. Add all this up in terms of hours. Decide how much you want to be paid per hour. Then multiply. Add this to the amount you of time you think you spent writing the original app and multiply by the hourly charge. Add the two together, and there's your "cost". Without knowing the specifics of the applications, and what it does, it's hard for me to say if your ultimate cost is a reasonable one or not. Good luck.
Silence is the voice of complicity. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. -- monty python Might I suggest that the universe was always the size of the cosmos. It is just that at one point the cosmos was the size of a marble. -- Colin Angus Mackay
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Marc Clifton wrote:
You might want to first check with your university regarding selling work you did as a student for them.
How would they have any ownership to anything he wrote while at uni? Do you think the nameless corporation is wanting to buy one of his answers to a uni assignment?
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash 24/04/2004
You might be surprised. There's an Ada compiler out there that significant pieces of were written by graduate students as part of their Master's theses. Two professors started a company using the students' work. You can guess how much money the students made on the deal :suss:.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I have written this application a year or so ago when I was in uni and now a company has approached me and is interested in sort of buying this application. There are some changes that might have to be done to adapt it to their environment but my problem is, I have no idea how much to charge them as I've never done this before. How would you guys go about it, are there any price ranges that certain applications are within? I don't want to give them a price and they will be thinking no way thats far too high but on the other hand I don't want to give them a real low price that would make it look cheap or something. I'd appreciate any opinions on this!
I wouldn't sell it, I would license it to them to resell for a percentage of sales. :edit: oh, I see from the other responses that they want to buy it to use themselves, I thought they were interested in buying it to develop and sell themselves to others. If one company is interested in it, then maybe thousands are, you should refine it into a commercial app and sell it over the internet, there could be a *lot* of money in it for you if you are willing to work hard enough at it. :edit:
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Michael Martin wrote:
Uni's don't have an equivalent, at least didn't see it when I started Uni.
Me too, but I went to uni rather a long time ago :-) It's getting more and more common for people to start companies young, maybe when they're at university, and I'm sure the unis want to make sure they get their slice of the pie if they go onto big things, using ideas and technology that they perhaps developed using university facilities and resources. I'm sure I've read about this kind of thing happening already e.g. Stanford were assigned the patent for PageRank[^] because Page & Brin were students there at the time.
0 bottles of beer on the wall, 0 bottles of beer, you take 1 down, pass it around, 4294967295 bottles of beer on the wall. Awasu 2.2.3 [^]: A free RSS/Atom feed reader with support for Code Project.
Hm.. That is interesting to know that stanford got awarded the patent
www.abhilash.in www.biztalkcafe.com http://biztalkland.blogspot.com
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I wouldn't sell it, I would license it to them to resell for a percentage of sales. :edit: oh, I see from the other responses that they want to buy it to use themselves, I thought they were interested in buying it to develop and sell themselves to others. If one company is interested in it, then maybe thousands are, you should refine it into a commercial app and sell it over the internet, there could be a *lot* of money in it for you if you are willing to work hard enough at it. :edit:
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D-Way wrote:
I have written this application a year or so ago when I was in uni
You might want to first check with your university regarding selling work you did as a student for them. Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh Smith -
Marc Clifton wrote:
You might want to first check with your university regarding selling work you did as a student for them.
How would they have any ownership to anything he wrote while at uni? Do you think the nameless corporation is wanting to buy one of his answers to a uni assignment?
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash 24/04/2004
Anything developed by grad students is (usually) at best co-owned by the university, at worst totally owned by the university (and/or prof). Two of the main factors are: 1. You are generally doing the work on their dime (their research dollars). 2. Some of the shadier prof's will not list their grad-students as co-authors/developers on work. (They view the work as theirs and the grad-students as menial labour)
...cmk Save the whales - collect the whole set
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Ahh...so you have two choices then: Licensing them the rights to use the application and keeping your source code. Selling them all rights to the source code and application which they can then turn around and sell to others if they want to without giving you anything in return.