Taming and Unveiling Software Reuse opportunities through White Label Software in Startups
Franklin M. Silva, Renata M.C.R. de Souza, Ivan Machado · 2020
White label products consist of rebranding a product to sell to another corporation. It has been largely applied in physical products' manufacturing, and it seems to be suitable for software startups, in particular for the opportunity of developing custom applications to different customers in reduced period of time, when compared to stand-alone applications. This study aims to unveil the concept of white label software and its feasibility for software startups; investigate how software startups used to apply this concept; investigate if advanced code reuse techniques, such as highly-configurable systems, could be used as an opportunity lever for them. We carried out semi-structured interviews with four software startups. We also conducted a survey in a Brazilian startup ecosystem.The results presented an interesting portrait of how software startups have dealt with software reuse in their daily practices, with particular attention on how white label software development has been explored in their projects. A set of challenges is also discussed in this paper.