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Comment by vadimberman | Hacker News Reader

> AR Debt Collector

Have you ever tried to get an invoice paid by an a*hole customer?

It's not exactly that. The post names it "Accounts Receivables as a Service". The idea is to make sure the invoice does not become a bad debt.

The willingness to pay small vendors and contractors varies across countries, industries, and cultures. Often, it involves a ridiculous amount of haggling and bickering.

For a small business, it is a lot of pain and loss of productivity (let alone actual revenue in some cases).

It's not technically ambitious but definitely a real problem to be solved.

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But... Is this not already a service offered by the financial industry for an extremely long time? What makes this a start-up?

You're probably referring to factoring, you're right... age-old product. The opportunity here is to bring sales & customer success automation to the unsexy accounting world.

Is reason to believe current services have poor customer service or sales?

Yes, just like there were taxis before Uber.

The existing options are horrible. They charge a lot, spend an effort of maybe 5 minutes per customer, and will not handle complicated cases. The debt collection is even worse.

As far as what a more resourceful and powerful startup can do: they can consolidate a database of uncooperative customers or maybe even the debts of different vendors which would make legal action more viable, handle cross-border issues, provide payment ratings (different from credit rating - pretty sure many AAA companies would think twice before delaying payments!), and generally will be taken more seriously than a small business.

Just a handful of ideas.

I think there are many more options that you are perhaps not aware of. You can hire contractors to work with your clients either for an hourly wage or for commission. At the other end of the spectrum is factoring, where you sell your AR outright in exchange for cash up front. This is common in industries like retail where there's a long wait between manufacturing goods and getting paid for them.

The idea that big companies would care about a payment rating misunderstands the relationship. When your startup has an opportunity to close a sale on a BigCo and you find they have a history of taking a few months to pay... what do you did with that information? Insist on custom contract terms? Walk away?

I don't doubt that it's possible to create a startup that does something like Factoring and just does it really well (perhaps especially with better marketing). But that's true of any industry. I don't see any analogy to the Taxi/Uber disruption. It would fundamentally be the same thing.

> The idea that big companies would care about a payment rating misunderstands the relationship. When your startup has an opportunity to close a sale on a BigCo and you find they have a history of taking a few months to pay... what do you did with that information? Insist on custom contract terms? Walk away?

Heh. Work less or hedge the bets.

I am saying it because I am familiar with the situation. A certain acronym company which may or may not be associated with the colour blue had a minor PoC gig and invited a bunch of contractors on loose terms. Many worked around the clock. Closer to the end of the project, it became apparent that there will be issues with the payment. Smarter guys bailed out.

Knowledge is power. There are always options. Kids in their twenties may be mesmerised by the power of known logos, then they learn that it's more about the figures.

I suspect the parent thought "AR" was Augmented Reality whereas it actually means "Accounts Receivables".

I am wondering however about using AR to simulate the discovery of that horse's head in the bed...might work quite well to get quick payment.

and add to it simulated knee breaking... might have a product idea here.

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