Ask HN: I've got my first paying customer. Now what?

[dsgrillo]

In 2019 I've started developing a project for my wife after consistently hearing her complain about the current software they had.

It's nothing fancy, but it was made specifically to solve the main pain points she had.

Fast forward, she convinced herself that the product is way too good and we should try selling it to other business. So, she made a couple of videos demoing it and spent 20$ on ads in Instagram. We got a couple of interested people, but no one actually asked for using it.

Last week we got an email from a company that was interested in trying in. Then we created an account for them and shortly explained how to use it. They've got really impressed by and now want to use it.

For now, I've said that they can have a free trial for a month. But they already signaled that they're interested in paying the price I've proposed.

So, what's next? Should I go after bootstraping a company? What about taxes? GDPR? SLA? Should I go after a lawyer and accountant? My current recurring cost for maintaining the system is ~10$ and I'm expecting to start receiving ~$200 per customer.

This should be just a side gig, but I think it might actually grow.

In addition, I'm currently living in Italy, but this client (and probably others comming) lives in Brazil.

[siquick]

Don't overthink it. Don't setup a company right now, you're not one - yet. If you want to setup an entity quickly with minimum effort then a sole trader would probably be the quickest way to make things 'legitimate'.

Yes make a contract, but there are dozens of sites to get a lawyer-generated contract from. Here's an example for my country: https://lawpath.com.au/

When I got my first few customers my "order form" was just a survey form (I think it was Typeform) to get the companies details, with a Stripe payment embed in it.

There's a lot of good info on here:

https://www.indiehackers.com/start

[dsgrillo]

Thanks for your advice and for the links!

What would be the advantage of setting up something (either a company or a sole trader)?

I wanna have the least amount of work in those "administration tasks", but I'm also afraid that it can bite me in a future. Do you have an idea of when is the proper time for caring in those tasks? After 1 customer? 10? Or maybe is related to the MRR?

Right now, the system should be stable (with tested backups) and the only bad thing that comes to my mind is not being paid. I'm totally fine if it happens and will worry about only if/when happens.

Am I being naive?

[lxg14]

try by outlining a proper contract with them, get some legal input and ask a lawyer to look it over. if the lawyer is worth their salt, they should be able to give better advice than I can.

[dsgrillo]

Hey, thanks for your suggestion!

Although it got me thinking, what's the worst thing that can happen if I have no contract at all?