Ask HN: How do you serve clients who are under NDA with their own clients?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25758916

by newsbinator • 6 years ago

5 1 6 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've been preparing a B2B service in which my customers are under NDA with their own customers, but they would be submitting business content to me.

That means they have an obligation to report to their customers that they're about to share content that would be covered under their Non-Disclosure Agreements.

No matter how reputable I am, they'd (rightly) rather not tell their customers, "hey by the way, we might submit your business info to this unrelated 3rd party".

How do document translation companies, for example, handle this sort of brick wall? They see a lot of text that would normally be covered under NDA, right?

I can sign an NDA with my customers, but they'd still be obligated to get the ok from their customers, and they don't want to have that conversation.

What business structure, legal structure or approach can you think of to solve the "I can't ask for your help because I'm under NDA" problem?

Jugurtha• 6 years ago

I can sign an NDA with my customers, but they'd still be obligated to get the ok from their customers, and they don't want to have that conversation.

They definitely should have that conversation and ask. If the service you provide is valuable enough, their customers will accept as they'll gain a lot.

You signed an NDA with your customer. Your customer signed an NDA with their customer. They should explicitly ask and figure that out, and then they're given permission to share with you. What they share with you is covered by your NDA.

One way to do it is for your customer to convince one of their customers for a pilot project. The project is successful. Your customer then brings that successful experience to one of their other customers (after asking the customer who participated in the pilot project if they could share that with other customers).

Let's look at the following:

- Vendor "V" has a customer "B"

- Customer "B" has customers "C1", "C2", "C3".

"B" talks with "C1" and convinces them to do project and this requires giving information to "V" because "V", can work some magic. "V" works on the project for "B" on the case of customer "C1".

Once it's successful, "B" can ask "C1" if it's possible to talk about this with "C2". "B" then talks with "C2" about the success with "C1" and "V". "B" onboards "C2".

This works well. Especially when "V", "B", and "C1" can share freely and be on the same calls and emails. In some cases, however, this cannot happen. "C1" has effectively given permission to "B" to share their information and data with "V" for a project lead by "B", but, "V" and "C1" must not communicate with each other.