New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Selling a database engine as a solo developer?

Ask HN: Selling a database engine as a solo developer?
7 by senderista | 2 comments on Hacker News.
After the database startup I was working at ran out of money, I spent 2 months working fulltime on the database kernel and made good progress, taking it in a rather different direction than I would have been able to at the company. I improved single-thread throughput/latency by literally 100x, to the point that I think it's faster than any generally available in-memory key-value database I know of. After some health issues that kept me from working for most of this year, I'm ready to resume work on the project, but I need to somehow make it financially viable, otherwise I'll have to find a "real job" to replenish our savings. From what I've read on HN and elsewhere, selling tools to developers seems hopeless, so I'd like to target businesses instead. But I have no sales experience, have terrible people skills, and I'm sure I'd lose all motivation to continue work on the project if I spent most of my time selling. I've managed to identify about half a dozen small companies (none of which you've probably heard of) that sell to the embedded database market. Rather than try to compete with them, I'm wondering if I should pursue a reselling arrangement ("white label") that would allow them (under a non-exclusive license) to resell my product, with their branding and sales, and my (presumably indirect) support. Has anyone here tried such a "white label" arrangement for selling a database engine, or for any shrink-wrapped software for that matter (I can only find SaaS examples, where it seems quite popular)?