imported post
Before having become an attorney, I was a software engineer. I worked for a while writing software for a company, now long gone, called "Tymshare". Well before microcomputers, this company had a privately owned network (the first commercial network to use the packet switching technology that makes the InterNet work), and their own computers. They made money by renting out their computers via dialup. The guy who was their premier wildly successful salesman, Dan Miller, worked in my office in Rosslyn, Va., right across the great river from Georgetown.
I asked Dan Miller one day how he did it. He said that he sold "vaporware", the first coinage of the term. He explained that, "It's not hardware, it's not software, it's vaporware, vapor, smoke... I go out and sell the customer whatever it is they really want, tell them we've got it and that it really exists, then I come back here and tell you and you build it for me." He elaborated, there are three simple rules to being the premier salesman: "It's free, it's easy, and it'll only take a week".
That company was destroyed by litigation resulting from the sale of "vaporware".