Advice on partnership with a large firm.
bdfh42: Some thoughts:A partnership of equals can work but if the power in a relationship is too one sided then one of the "partners" is effectively the employee of the other.You describe a potential customer for your software that can see that there is money to be made in exploiting your IP. They are offering their company as a test bed plus some money "up front" in exchange for 50% of the business.From their viewpoint this could be a great deal They get a bespoke application (for be sure they will insist that your software meets their needs in particular) at a good discount. Plus if you manage to sell another copy or three they get their money back.Beware the idea that a company is "well connected" when it comes to their trade rivals - they might be industry fashion setters but this may not translate into software choice - plus a package that is seen as being owned by a business rival has to be pretty good (or cheap) to overcome that stigma.I have run into a great number of businesses over the years. Almost all of them think that their business processes are typical and a good model for the rest of their industry - in my experience they are all wrong when they think this. Each business has a whole lot of similar processes but they all emphasise different aspects, measures and controls. Writing packaged software based upon the model of a single customer is likely to produce software that will be difficult to sell to others in the same line of trade. A good package is based upon as wide a set of industry experiences as possible.OK - I have raised a while bunch of issues but have no specific advice other than "Beware - proceed with extreme caution".