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Comment by cjensen | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people are saying code is not an asset, so story time:

In Ancient Days, Ampex was the king of video tape recording and magnetic storage. They created a system for recording documents onto video tape, and then later a system for recording documents into mass storage. The software engineers on this project created a database system to manage the storage. When the project was inevitably cancelled, they allowed the software engineer to keep the code from project Oracle.

Of course the value depends on the what the code accomplishes, and what new ideas you can leverage it into.

[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-01794...

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Are you hinting that Oracle Corporation came out of some database code that was developed at Ampex? I couldn't find anything about Ampex or the CIA on Oracle's Wikipedia page [1].

EDIT: The Wikipedia page needs to be updated! [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Corporation#History

[2] https://ce399fascism.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/oracle-corp-na...

Code is an asset, and can have monetary value.

The problem is it's hard to know if op's code is actually useful or not. If it is, then they should be able to spin it into something else that does make money. Show that it's generating revenue, and then that'll be the value of their business.

From there, op can be as flexible as they like: hiring freelancers and running it in their spare time, selling it off, getting investors, working from home in an area with low cost of living, etc.

If OP can't make money off this thing, then that's a very bad indicator because it means other people can't really make money off of it. If OP needs more resources like a large sales team to make this profitable, then the value of his code to the overall business is lower and they shouldn't expect as much and maybe just write the entire thing off as a bad lesson (which honestly sounds like the case here).

The thing is, though, that many modern startups don't make a distinction between doing an integration and writing software.

It sounds like OP did the former, which means there's not likely an original product to sell, just a custom assembly of other products that form a system. That's a worthwhile thing to build and can be a money maker, but it's not an asset itself.

If you take away the installs of the products that make up your solution, then look at what's left... that's the asset that's being offered to OP. It might be something worthwhile, but most likely he's being offered it because he has an emotional attachment to what he's built, and they think he will take it without looking too closely.

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