How to present your code to potential buyers?

Question

I'll do a demo of my code to slightly non-technical audience, and I need to show them what I've got in my project (about 15K lines of code). I'm trying to convince them that I've spend time on the project and it's in a good state.

These guys planning to invest money into this product. Therefore I should convince them that this app worth the price that they are going to spend and justify the time I've spent, secondly they should see that this is something takes time and I know what I'm doing (basically I need to win their trust) .

• What metrics I can use other than "lines of code"? (Maybe lines of comment?)
• What are the best tools (preferably free) to generate a report from .NET Projects?

UPDATE :

Also a way to provide "project cost - cocomo" would be cool, like this one :

FOUND: http://www.cms4site.ru/utility.php?utility=cocomoii will help you to calculate an estimated cost for your project.

Answer 1

An investor only cares about money. Investors start at the exit and work backwards. Knowing this, pitch your project in terms of the return they will get in their investment.

Key points would include:

• Your expertise: Do you know the market you want to sell in to? Are you leveraging your expertise in some way to make the project a reality?
• Risk: Using your already existing code base lowers risk in terms of both time and money. They will probably do technical due diligence to validate your claims, so be honest here.
• Time to Market: Having a code base in place will reduce their time to market, which may be significant.
• Vision: They need to know that there is a future for your product. This is your chance to get them excited!

Investment is about the future, not the past, so understand that you need to achieve what you are promising. The path you trod to get to where you are now may be interesting, but largely irrelevant to the investor. What I'm trying to say is sell the vision, not where you are now or where you've been.

Good luck and hope you get what you need!

Answer 2

If they're non-technical, it won't matter. It will be like trying to sell a high-end bike to people who don't know a bike from a car. 15k lines of code won't matter to them any more than 300k lines of code will.

You need to find something other than the actual code to wow them with.

Can you code up some demos and tell them how short time it will take them to build similar applications with your code? Like "If you use my code, you can build this multimedia application in 15 minutes without writing more than a few lines of code". Non-technical people generally love saving time and money.

It probably depends on how "slightly" they are in the non-technical department.

Answer 3

It's not clear to me from your question whether you're talking about people who would buy the use of your product or ownership of your product.

In either case, ask yourself these questions:

• "What problem(s) does this product solve for my users, from their point of view?"
• "What does this product let the users do, that they already want to do, but can't do without it?"
• "What does this product let the users do, that they already want to do, but can't do as easily without it?"

Features don't matter. Menus and dialogs don't matter (unless they require explanation, in which case they matter in the negative sense).

If you want numbers that interest a potential buyer of (an instance of) the product, talk in terms of how much time or money the buyer can save by using your product.

If you want numbers that interest a potential buyer of shares in your company or product, talk in terms of the size of the market, how you've analyzed that market's needs, and the ROI of any investment.

Answer 4

I've had success showing potential customers our automated build cycle, in slideshow form. I took them through our "production line" as if it was a factory tour, and showed the nice colored bars of coverage reports, uptilted lines of historical lines of code, pie charts of breakdowns of lines of code per module.

Then I did the same for everything aroung the actual building. So there's a requirements pipeline where they are involved, and a test/validation cycle where they are again involved.

It may not mean anything to them, but it shows them you have control over your process, and control over the quality of the delivered end product.

Please note that although people may be non-technical, try to be as honest as possible. As soon as they discover one single tiny lie in your story, you're lost. And chances are that there's that one technical guy in the back who can ask that one question which makes your house of cards fall down.

Happy sales!