Built an app for my university. Faculty loved it. Should I charge them?

I am a professor in a CS department.

* Easy: ask your dept for a job or RAship to continue to support and build the app and grow its utility. We pay students all the time to build website infra for us in the cs dept. It is usually a ~20$/hr rate, though, so you won't make too much, but it will fund your improvements.

* If you built the app on your own laptop, and you've published the app to the app stores on your own account, you likely own all the rights. Good for you. If the app is hosted in anyway on university resources, then you should be careful if you want to grow this into a business.

* From my own experience, it is very difficult to sell to individual university departments. Much easier to get hired as a consultant. But "enterprise software" that is sold by a license may require the "university procurement" people to get involved. They will went some evidence you'll be around for 3-5yrs, etc...

* Look into how Piazza, Gradescope, Overleaf are doing with university-wide account sales. From what I know, those sales processes are slow and expensive, even though the apps bring enormous value to faculty (e.g., i end up paying for my own single accounts and expensing them against my research budget). Use your network to find someone at those companies to do more research.

Good luck!

btw, happy to try your app and give you feedback

Prove you have something by first selling it to a different university at a price - you can use your existing university to say "we have existing users".

Don't charge your existing university - let them use it free - you need references.

If you’re serious, you may want to talk to a lawyer.

For example, depending on what type of student you are, and if you used school resources, your university might have some ownership of what you created.

So, first confirm you actually own copyright over what you made. Then work out what to do next.

> Or, I shouldn’t charge them at all?

Would you feel right about charging them? I know this sounds hopelessly naive on HN, but not everything needs to be monetized, even if it can be. You have a right to make money, but you don't have a responsibility to charge them if you don't feel good about it.

Consider also how much responsibility you want to have to maintain and update this application for paying customers, and how much of your life you want to devote to supporting it.

Any answer is okay, I don't know your situation.

Is it $16/user/month or $16/university/month?

If it’s per university, see if you can have someone Venmo you a few months worth of subscription (to prove the model) before worrying about anything else. But it’s gonna be hard to make a living at this price point. Consider raising your price by 100x and see if they still love it then.

If it’s per user, see if it works for non-universities. If you can, let them use it for free, get a case study and go sell to every other industry, they will all be easier. We started our SaaS in a similar way at a lower price ($5/user/month), 10 years on we’re still rolling and we have never charged our uni a dollar. Feel free to email me if you want any more advice on this.

(Not a lawyer.)

ps. What does your app do?

Before you form anything. Are you sure they will transition from free users to a subscription model? Did you already talk with them about it?

I'm assuming the 16$ is per seat? Are the people currently using it the ones that can get the budget approved?

Talk to an immigration attorney first.

An F1 visa has significant limitations regarding work.

Violation of its terms could get you deported.

Deportation from the US often comes with a long term ban on entry.

If it doesn’t seem reasonable to pay an attorney for $16/user/month, that is an indication that the potential business is not actually viable…legal fees are an ordinary operating expense for a viable business.

Keep in mind that what you are considering leaves a clear paper trail should ICE decide to investigate.

Good luck.

As others have mentioned, before you do any commercial things talk to two kinds of lawyers. First talk to an immigration attorney. Second talk to a lawyer dealing with IP. Both these issues have serious consequences if you ignore them.

At Cal, a couple of students built an all-in-one course search/scheduling tool which incorporated grade distros, professor ratings, exam DBs, etc. They eventually sold it to our independent student union for continued development and maintenance. It sounds like your solution targets professors but it could be something to keep in mind.

Universities are billion dollar organizations focused on their own financial growth. Many universities are private and obsessed with growth.

There is no issue with charging them to help on their mission. In fact, it's probably the only way to do so sustainably.

If they like your tool enough, and you stopped working for them for free to do so, they would likely find the funds to get someone else to make it, while using your free labour like too many organizations do already in other ways.

The other thing to look out for is brain rape. Academia will love to understand how you solved a problem in detail so either they can present it as their own, or imagine they could do it themselves.

Consider if you are being meek or gun-shy, and how much of it is the desired behaviour of you.

Mmm...that's too little money, like...turn that into a job instead. Consulting-ise it more.

Sell it to a different university.

If you don't own the IP, like other people said, try packaging as an opportunity to sell the same app to other universities, with you sharing in the profit.

Assuming they are willing to pay for it. You should. For a price where they are happy. Go through the proper channel though. It should be a tedious and taunting task. But you should be able to learn so much from it, Enterprise purchasing agreement is 100x worst.

Then you can start selling your software to other Universities. For a much higher ( or a fairer ) price.

Good Luck.

Most (all?) universities have a commercialization department/program. Maybe get in touch with them?

I wonder if you could sidestep the visa issue by forming a business entity in your home country for the purpose of selling your app. I'm thinking that if I was getting a good app, and willing to pay $16/mo, I wouldn't care what country my money was going to.

Are they willing to pay for it? Most people love free apps, but don't buy the paid versions, so the fact they like it does not mean they will be interested to pay.

This kind of stuff needs to be discussed upfront.

Selling software is no longer the best path to success. Open source your software and offer alternative means to make money. If the software is really good, "they" will throw money at you through:

1. Paid support.

2. Software as a Service (OpenSaaS)

3. Open-core model.

4. GitHub sponsors.

5. Paid feature requests.

6. Get paid to build open source extensions for existing products.

https://cult.honeypot.io/reads/6-ways-you-make-money-as-an-o...

Check y-combinator for seed money.

https://www.ycombinator.com/deal/

Charge them for it and see how it goes. If it’s successful and very useful then you can iron out the details.