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Launch HN: Vendr (YC S19) – Buying software so you don’t have to

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Re: Launch HN: Vendr (YC S19) – Buying software so you don’t have to

#31

Post by PeterisP »

codingdave wrote: post #16
saasbuyer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The subscription price is tied to headcount. If you're below 100 employees, we charge $2k per month and it scales up based on # of employees. We tied pricing to headcount because it is a solid indicator of quantity of products and total $ spend. At these levels, we are to maintain a positive ROI. I'm open to suggestions and improvements with the pricing model! 2. Our sweet-spot is SaaS but we are testing non-SaaS…

Thanks for additional info. As far as the pricing model, what you say makes sense for larger companies. I'm thinking of small companies, say 10-20 people. Big enough that they do have some purchasing pain, but not $2k/month worth of it. Setting a low price point for them might get growing companies on board early, becoming larger clients as they grew. For non-SaaS, I didn't have anything specific in mind. I know that…

Do 10-20 person companies generally have the same purchasing pain? I mean, small purchases (no matter if licenses or saas or whatever) are done with off-the-shelf prices, you pick out a plan and just buy it; you're not going to have the time-consuming enterprise sales dance with vendors refusing to name a price until they've had a sales team visit you in person to give a demo and negotiate a custom deal etc - that kind of high-touch sales inevitably requires the price to be large, and if you're not paying these large prices, then you aren't going through all this interaction with vendors and you simply don't have the problem that Vendr is solving.

Re: Launch HN: Vendr (YC S19) – Buying software so you don’t have to

#32

Post by cedricd »

Back when I was at a largish company as an engineering manager I had to negotiate these sorts of contracts all the time. Would have paid for this in a heartbeat. You guys are definitely on to something.

We eventually had an in-house person do it and they didn't love managing it either. The hardest part of their job honestly was tracking all the ones we had, ensuring we renewed on time, and talking to the procurement department to get everything squared away. When we had to move off credit cards to more corporate billing it was a nightmare to update everything.

And even when it was all buttoned up I still had to review that list quarterly to ensure we could drop old stuff, maintain which team(s) owned what service from the technical side, etc.

Next time I'm at a bigger company I'm using you for sure.

Re: Launch HN: Vendr (YC S19) – Buying software so you don’t have to

#33

Post by saasbuyer »

cedricd wrote: post #32

Back when I was at a largish company as an engineering manager I had to negotiate these sorts of contracts all the time. Would have paid for this in a heartbeat. You guys are definitely on to something. We eventually had an in-house person do it and they didn't love managing it either. The hardest part of their job honestly was tracking all the ones we had, ensuring we renewed on time, and talking to the procurement…

We've observed the same. Even at bigger companies, the procurement team tends to focus on the most expensive/riskiest/sensitive vendors. That means that multi-millions dollar purchases are prioritized over $100k engineering SaaS purchases, for example.

We think that software buying needs to exist as an external function. There are too many products for internal teams to tackle this alone.

Re: Launch HN: Vendr (YC S19) – Buying software so you don’t have to

#38

Post by ghego1 »

> We make money via a monthly subscription to buy and renew all of the SaaS in your stack.

I find this a bit ironic. To solve the pain of purchasing SAAS, you need to subscribe to a SAAS. Additionally, I think it would be much more convincing if you offered an option in which there's a small upfront fee (or even none) and then you make money on how much you can make your client save.

Re: Launch HN: Vendr (YC S19) – Buying software so you don’t have to

#39

Post by quickthrower2 »

ghego1 wrote: post #38

> We make money via a monthly subscription to buy and renew all of the SaaS in your stack. I find this a bit ironic. To solve the pain of purchasing SAAS, you need to subscribe to a SAAS. Additionally, I think it would be much more convincing if you offered an option in which there's a small upfront fee (or even none) and then you make money on how much you can make your client save.

I thought the same at first but it’s not ironic really. No more than loan consolidation ie taking a single loan to pay off your various debts.

Re: Launch HN: Vendr (YC S19) – Buying software so you don’t have to

#40

Post by arak_shan »

saasbuyer wrote: post #35
rajacombinator wrote: post #30

I don’t know anything about this space or problem but I like this pitch. Good luck.

Thank you!!! Demo day pitch is next week, so that gives us a nice confidence boost!

I think what you're doing is super interesting but I'd be curious to know who your biggest competitors are. How are you positioning yourself against Intello or Zylo?
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