41–50 of 94 posts
the fortune 5,000,000 company I work at subscribes to GoToMeeting.com - .. desktop sharing.. teleconferencing for product demos and meetings
rememberthemilk.com kind of goes halfway, with a freemium model. In some ways, that seems more sane to me than DHH's pay-only ideology.
Well, first off, there are free versions of all 37s's apps.
Second, RTM isn't profitable (yet/ever?). 37S is. That seems more sane to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The end-consumer market is very difficult since internet-users are used to get everything for free. ...except for Mac users, who support a healthy little industry made up of one- and two-person software companies. In other words, consumers don't spend money for software, except for the ones who do.
So - for the analysis part of the question: why? What makes them different?
Add to that that I'd venture 80% of the windows users have never "bought" software (except games). Windows is either pirated or comes with the computer... office is acquired from work, some other programs are freeware/never paid for shareware.
I think another aspect of this to consider is this: Eventually, most things will be commoditized, but this happens slower for some things, and faster for others. How does the 'dhh style company' keep that at bay - or do they? How sustainable is the business in the face of cheaper competition?
This is where branding and marketing come in. Ask Apple, BMW, Mercedes, Luis Vutton, etc etc.
These businesses all sell their products for much more than comparable products, and they do quite well. Why? Because there are two types of consumers that are sold by their marketing: those who appreciate high quality, and those that want to be seen as appreciating high quality.
You don't have to appeal to everyone.
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There are plenty of good products that people probably wouldn't pay for these days: web servers, unix-like OS's, and scripting languages; just to name a few. Once upon a time, companies made a lot of money selling Unixes, and for a period of time, there were commercial web servers.
You are crazy. Clorox still has more end-consumer market share than all store brand bleaches put together, even though it is chemically the same stuff and costs way more.
The point is that you can do that kind of thing in that market sector. Can you in IT? Maybe, but certainly not in some areas. The economics and marketing are quite different.
Bug.gd plans to do it by selling private P2P help desks directly.
We have another unrelated service launching soon that will directly charge users for anything above casual usage.
I think another aspect of this to consider is this: Eventually, most things will be commoditized, but this happens slower for some things, and faster for others. How does the 'dhh style company' keep that at bay - or do they? How sustainable is the business in the face of cheaper competition?
>How sustainable is the business in the face of cheaper competition? This is where branding and marketing come in. Ask Apple, BMW, Mercedes, Luis Vutton, etc etc. These businesses all sell their products for much more than comparable products, and they do quite well. Why? Because there are two types of consumers that are sold by their marketing: those who appreciate high quality, and those that want to be seen as app…
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Indeed, thinking about it a minute, a lot of my experience with 'branding' online is that small and independent is cool. How much cooler is it to have a @yourowndomain.com email address than @hotmail.com? Remember geocities? Another thing that was sort of the lowest common denominator.
Maybe Google has a positive brand at this point, but I pay for very few things there. I suppose I might pay a little bit more to them for some things in the future to have everything 'tied together', but that's getting away from 'branding'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>How sustainable is the business in the face of cheaper competition? This is where branding and marketing come in. Ask Apple, BMW, Mercedes, Luis Vutton, etc etc. These businesses all sell their products for much more than comparable products, and they do quite well. Why? Because there are two types of consumers that are sold by their marketing: those who appreciate high quality, and those that want to be seen as app…
Right, good examples. But those are all physical products. Can you think of online brands that have that kind of power? I can think of some negative examples, like AOL, that most hackers wouldn't have been caught dead using. ... Indeed, thinking about it a minute, a lot of my experience with 'branding' online is that small and independent is cool. How much cooler is it to have a @yourowndomain.com email address than…
37 Signals
Salesforce
Flickr (picasa is free, and people still use flicker)
expedia/travelocity (not startups anymore mind you)
rememberthemilk.com kind of goes halfway, with a freemium model. In some ways, that seems more sane to me than DHH's pay-only ideology.
>In some ways, that seems more sane to me than DHH's pay-only ideology. Well, first off, there are free versions of all 37s's apps. Second, RTM isn't profitable (yet/ever?). 37S is. That seems more sane to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, good examples. But those are all physical products. Can you think of online brands that have that kind of power? I can think of some negative examples, like AOL, that most hackers wouldn't have been caught dead using. ... Indeed, thinking about it a minute, a lot of my experience with 'branding' online is that small and independent is cool. How much cooler is it to have a @yourowndomain.com email address than…
As for brands with power, off the top of my head: 37 Signals Salesforce Flickr (picasa is free, and people still use flicker) expedia/travelocity (not startups anymore mind you)