Kiss of Death – Contract Provisions Entrepreneurs Should Avoid at All Costs

They need the work. You need to get paid. They send you the contract. You check the details and make small changes. You sign. They sign. Then you get to work delivering what they need.

That’s the way we’ve done contracts at NthCode for the last three years. And, given that we’ve been doing work-for-hire software development — where everything we do belongs to them, but we get paid monthly for our labor — the above negotiating process is really just a means to an end to ensure that they get the work they need and you get paid for it.

But things quickly become complicated if you’re trying to sell a product: How will selling your product to this client constrain your business elsewhere? Will you be able to advertise the fact that you have worked for this client? What if the deal becomes bad and you or the client want to end the contract? What happens to this contract if you or your client are acquired by another company?

What is the spectrum of possible answers?  What is normal and reasonable?  And what might be the first proposal from your potential client?  These are things you can spend hundreds of dollars per hours finding out from a lawyer.

But, before you do that, spend just a little time with this article and be enlightened.