Put clear legal terms around your startup pilot

Pilot arrangements often begin informally, but the risk usually appears later when the parties remember the trial differently. Common pressure points include whether the pilot was paid or unpaid, who owns improvements suggested during testing, whether the customer can keep using the product after the trial, and what level of support was actually promised. A written pilot agreement helps put those points in one place before rollout. That is especially useful if your MVP is changing quickly or the pilot customer expects future commercial terms to follow.

A pilot agreement pack commonly deals with the trial period, the product or service being tested, access conditions, fees if any, support boundaries, confidentiality, ownership of pre-existing IP, rights to use feedback, liability wording, and early termination. If the arrangement starts with a short-form commercial document, an LOI or MoU may also be appropriate. The exact mix depends on how formal the deal is and whether you are piloting with one customer, a small group of users, or a strategic partner.

The legal wording depends on the shape of the pilot in practice. We usually need to know who the pilot participant is, what your product does, whether real business operations will rely on it, how feedback will be collected, whether any sensitive information is shared, and what you want to happen when the trial ends. A short internal beta with friendly testers raises different issues from a business-critical pilot with an enterprise customer, so the commercial setup matters as much as the document label.

A precedent can be a starting reference, but tailored drafting is usually safer where the document affects customers, staff, suppliers or regulators. However, pilots often involve details that generic wording skips over. For example, a standard form may not deal properly with ownership of product improvements, limits on customer reliance, restrictions on public announcements, or the line between trial support and production support. If your pilot is tied to future pricing discussions or a possible longer-term contract, those transition points also need careful wording. Tailored drafting is often most useful where the pilot is commercially important or involves valuable IP and confidential information.

Timing depends on how settled your commercial terms already are and whether you need a fresh draft or a review of an existing document. In many matters, once we have your instructions and the key pilot details, we can move quickly through the first draft stage. If the other side has already supplied paper, review time may also depend on how much negotiation is needed. After sign-up, the next step is usually a lawyer consultation, followed by drafting or mark-up and then one round of amendments within the fixed-fee.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Pilot Agreement Pack service, pricing starts from $1,200.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.