Contracts and support promises
Useful for
Introduction
Commercial promises quickly become operational obligations. A young SaaS company should be careful not to promise enterprise-grade support, availability or recovery before the platform and team can evidence it.
Knowledge scope
This is startup-specific guidance in the public playbook. It is framed around the Pre-Production Ready -> Production Ready decision point and the practical trade-offs a small company faces while moving from idea to Production.
Why it matters
The danger is not only legal exposure. The practical risk is that sales promises create an operating model the team cannot support. Support hours, uptime targets, recovery times and breach notification expectations need to match reality.
How it fits the playbook
This reference supports the Pre-Production Ready -> Production Ready stage of the startup CTO playbook. It gives the public context for the decision without exposing the deeper assessment method behind the agentic operating model.
Design considerations
- Align support promises with actual staffing, monitoring and incident processes.
- Avoid committing to resilience levels before restore and failover paths are tested.
- Make contract positions consistent with privacy, processors, support access and customer data handling.
- Use plain language for early customer expectations rather than copying enterprise terms prematurely.
- Review promises again as customer dependency and regulated customer interest increase.
What good looks like
Sales, contracts and operations tell the same story. Customers understand what is promised, what is not yet promised and how the service will be supported.
How Brokenhouse helps
Turn this into a practical plan.
I help technology teams turn this guidance into decisions, implementation plans, governance evidence and production-ready operating models.
Talk through your situationNext guidance
Related decisions to work through
Are we ready for Pre-Production?
Before moving from Pilot to Production, the company needs a pre-production governance stance. This is the point where the business has to decide what promises it is prepared to make, who is allowed to make changes, who can accept risk, and what evidence must exist before the production environment is created.
Are we ready for Production?
Before moving from Pilot to Production, the company needs a pre-production governance stance. This is the point where the business has to decide what promises it is prepared to make, who is allowed to make changes, who can accept risk, and what evidence must exist before the production environment is created.
Are we ready to scale Production?
Production is a different level of commitment. By this point the company is no longer just proving that the product can work. It is making an operational promise to customers, investors and itself.