--- title: Selling vapour is corporate suicide in slow motion description: Selling software capabilities that don't yet exist — vaporware — is a short-term tactic that destroys long-term trust and business viability. The pressure to... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/selling-vapour-is-corporate-suicide-in-slow-motion-kxip1gdtl twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Selling vapour is corporate suicide in slow motion | daily.dev og:description: Selling software capabilities that don't yet exist — vaporware — is a short-term tactic that destroys long-term trust and business viability. The pressure to... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/selling-vapour-is-corporate-suicide-in-slow-motion-kxip1gdtl og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/kxip1GdTl.png og:image:alt: Selling vapour is corporate suicide in slow motion og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Selling vapour is corporate suicide in slow motion **[TechCentral](https://daily.dev/sources/techcentral)** · 6 min read · 4 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Selling software capabilities that don't yet exist — vaporware — is a short-term tactic that destroys long-term trust and business viability. The pressure to close deals this quarter drives sales teams to overpromise, but the real costs land later: slipped timelines, engineering teams stuck firefighting, legal exposure, and customer churn. There's a meaningful distinction between selling an ambitious but resourced roadmap versus promising something with no real delivery path. The honest alternative is transparency about what's built versus what's planned, commercial models that reward renewals over signatures, and deep enough domain knowledge to understand a customer's actual problem. Trust, once spent, can't be bought back — and the market prices in the truth eventually. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How much did the botched SAP project cost Spar? The failed SAP implementation cost Spar R786-million. It is cited as an example of the real-world financial damage that results from technology projects sold or delivered as more complete or capable than they actually were, with costs ultimately landing on the customer's operations rather than the vendor's development budget. _Anyone weighing vendor promises against delivery risk can find similar enterprise IT postmortems on daily.dev._ ### How much money has been wasted on failed South African government IT projects? R12.1-billion has been wasted as government IT projects collapsed in South Africa. This is presented as an extreme example of the pattern where technology is sold ahead of what can actually be delivered, with public-sector projects offering some of the priciest examples due to ever-growing budgets and deadlines that outlast the officials who set them. _Developers and IT leaders tracking large-scale project failures can follow more delivery postmortems on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The Sideprocalypse](https://daily.dev/posts/the-sideprocalypse-diaddgpav) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The most dangerous customer is the quiet one](https://daily.dev/posts/the-most-dangerous-customer-is-the-quiet-one-zpc7gl9vr) · TechCentral · 12 upvotes · 1 comments - [Why Your SaaS is Dying in the "Validation Theater" Trap \(And How to Fix It\)](https://daily.dev/posts/why-your-saas-is-dying-in-the-validation-theater-trap-and-how-to-fix-it--2dcuuqxdy) · Medium · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [How to Compete in SaaS](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-compete-in-saas-vo8ipkxe0) · Stay SaaSy · 58 upvotes · 4 comments --- Tags: [#product-management](https://daily.dev/tags/product-management), [#technical-debt](https://daily.dev/tags/technical-debt) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/selling-vapour-is-corporate-suicide-in-slow-motion-kxip1gdtl) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Selling vapour is corporate suicide in slow motion","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/selling-vapour-is-corporate-suicide-in-slow-motion-kxip1gdtl","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/selling-vapour-is-corporate-suicide-in-slow-motion-kxip1gdtl"},"datePublished":"2026-07-16T09:02:21.547Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T18:27:02.312Z","description":"Selling software capabilities that don't yet exist — vaporware — is a short-term tactic that destroys long-term trust and business viability. 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It is cited as an example of the real-world financial damage that results from technology projects sold or delivered as more complete or capable than they actually were, with costs ultimately landing on the customer's operations rather than the vendor's development budget. Anyone weighing vendor promises against delivery risk can find similar enterprise IT postmortems on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"How much money has been wasted on failed South African government IT projects?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"R12.1-billion has been wasted as government IT projects collapsed in South Africa. This is presented as an extreme example of the pattern where technology is sold ahead of what can actually be delivered, with public-sector projects offering some of the priciest examples due to ever-growing budgets and deadlines that outlast the officials who set them. Developers and IT leaders tracking large-scale project failures can follow more delivery postmortems on daily.dev."}}]} ```