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Comment by tsiki | Hacker News Reader

This makes me think if there might be demand for a consultancy-like startup, which has the business idea of taking over a SaaS service if the company is discontinued, and running it for x number of months/years. The business model would presumably be charging the SaaS company an insurance-like fee, and the value proposition would be that they can advertise their SaaS as a "safe" service.

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Would the numbers ever make sense? If a company does fail it's either technical failure or an unsustainable business model. I doubt a consultancy would want to inherit the former, and if the business model fails then it's hard to see how a third party could continue operations when it was only being paid a fraction of prior revenue.

Plus, keep in mind that most startups fail - this isn't like fire insurance. If anything, a consultancy like this might make it easier for founders to walk away sooner and with less guilt knowing that someone else will bail out their customers.

Or, the startup could save that insurance fee up each month, when the standard funds are gone, they declare EOL and burn through the savings doing maintenance while users migrate (of course, they'd burn through the extra, so the third-party does work better there).

The problem with a third-party is the complexity of handing over a full system and the fact the majority of startups fail early, i.e. the insurance fee would be much higher earlier in the life of the startup.

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