Starter Kit. Idea 297 of 500. Cluster 15
A Sri Lankan software product, not a services firm: one tool, sold by subscription to the world
The mechanism, from the book
The proof exists in Malabe. What is missing is a thousand small versions of it.
The first step
Pick the one tool you would build and write a single page describing what it does, who it is for and what it costs per month. Show it to 20 people abroad who do that job, through the professional groups where they gather, and ask for a pre-order or a signed letter of intent. If nobody pays before it exists, change the tool before you write the code.
- Who pays first
- A small business abroad with one specific, recurring problem, which pays monthly for a tool that solves it better than the big platforms.
- What leaves today
- Engineers here are paid by the hour to build other companies' products, so the subscription revenue and the ownership stay abroad.
Ask first
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask which company form suits selling software subscriptions to customers abroad.
- Inland Revenue Department. Ask how income from foreign subscriptions is taxed and what records you must keep.
Check before you spend
Who owns the code if friends help build it, how payments from abroad reach a local account, and what the terms of sale must say.
Find out these three numbers
- What price per month do people who do this job pay today?
- How many of the people you asked would pre-order before it exists?
- What does the nearest competing tool cost, and what do users dislike?
A comparison from the book
Malabe and Stockholm. Chapter Three
"None of this appears in the export figures as what it is, because the money is counted in London and Stockholm."
Own the product here, and the money it earns is counted here too, not in the buyer's city.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.