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Why is selling software so weird?

zeptonaut.com

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Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#111

Post by wink »

codeflo wrote: post #94
leftnode wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but also selling B2B software. You can hold a user accountable that they'll actually use the software purchased. The company is spending a lot of money on it, finds value in it, and wants to ensure it's being used and implemented correctly. B2B software with figures like the OP means you're building a professional relationship with a customer (as opposed to a transactional one), and can push back when the…

Also, users are sometimes simply ordered, by their bosses or IT, not to press buttons in ways that are known to break the software. This is sometimes considered cheaper than fixing bugs, or at the very least, mitigates the problem until the next scheduled deployment window. It’s a very different world.

Very true, but I'd paraphrase it more positively: If the deployment cycle is long/complicated/expensive enough, everyone is happy if a whack workaround exists and it's not breaking everything. Not all bugs are actually critical and have to be solved the next day.

And I'm saying this a developer, where we would (and have) gladly sometimes fixed the bug during the 1h call with the customer, but until it was being rolled out... weeks, maybe months.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#112

Post by yboris »

My commercial, charityware ($3.50 to charity of every purchase), MIT open source software Video Hub App sells for $5 with about 100 customers per month. 4,000 purchases over 4 years since the launch. Unsure how common it is, but I want more people to be transparent about their products, so others can know the distribution of possibilites.

https://videohubapp.com/en/

https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#113

Post by zeptonaut22 »

javajosh wrote: post #107
zeptonaut22 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best footnotes I've found provide nice bidirectional linking for easily jumping to / back from the footnote so that it disrupts the reading as little as possible. The beautiful / fun part about having a blog is that it's your own little garden: you can adjust things just like how you see fit, and footnotes were just a case where I figured I'd do without until I could implement it in a way I was happy with.

May I suggest you add "footnotes on hover"? I feel like this is the ultimate expression of the idea, and books would do it that way if they could.

Hover is a great experience on desktop, but it annoyingly requires having a separate solution for mobile. Right now 60+% of the traffic on the site is from mobile devices, so figuring out something (hopefully simple and very lightweight) that works for both mobile and desktop is the goal.

Your suggestion is noted, though!

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#114

Post by jermaustin1 »

heurisko wrote: post #103
bob1029 wrote: post #49

> Low volume software is not a good business to be in. I disagree very strongly with this based on my experience so far. Being in the business of low volume software is fantastic if your customers are other businesses . The advantages of low-volume/complex B2B software biz are incredible to me. Contract terms are measured in half-decades. Your users can actually be trained and held accountable in many cases. You don'…

> SQLite vs nightmare distributed abominations Don't see the benefit of using SQLite over a RDMS like MySQL or Postgres, especially if users are still in the tens of thousands.

I've shipped multiple products that are backed by a SQLite database for core functionality (authentication, billing, and permissions mostly), and individual SQLite databases for customer data.

It has made it incredibly simple to downgrade and delete customer data when they request. The application kills the billing profile, and emails the administrative email for the organization a link to download and delete their data.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#115

Post by photochemsyn »

bob1029 wrote: post #49

> Low volume software is not a good business to be in. I disagree very strongly with this based on my experience so far. Being in the business of low volume software is fantastic if your customers are other businesses . The advantages of low-volume/complex B2B software biz are incredible to me. Contract terms are measured in half-decades. Your users can actually be trained and held accountable in many cases. You don'…

My only experience using really expensive software comes from the academic biotech sector, in which (for a while) there was a thriving high-end software business, with research groups paying $10K+ for a limited license for DNA sequencing and analysis software, and also software that came packaged with instrumentation, things like mass spectrometers, that cost $100K+.

The stand-alone software for DNA analysis has been mostly replaced by free open-source Python packages written by researchers who didn't want to pay the high fees or deal with things like distributing HASP dongles etc.

On the other hand, writing the software that comes packaged with expensive instrumentation, and that's optimized for that instrumentation, remains a viable business. The cost is bundled into the overall cost of the instrumentation setup. A research group/university that buys such instrumentation expects it to be supported over time, and so that's where low volume high end software production is not really going to change. The software is so closely integrated with the hardware, and software failure has such serious consequences, that there's no way FOSS could ever work in that situation. This is as you say a more business-to-business situation.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#116

Post by jsiaajdsdaa »

murukesh_s wrote: post #24
jsiaajdsdaa wrote: post #2

It's because the hardest parts of software involve connecting with other systems and soliciting your custom requirements. Imagine if you wanted to buy a custom car, but you wanted an "off the shelf from walmart" experience. "Hello, I'd like to buy a custom car." "Ok great, we have many over there." "Yes but you don't have any pink ones with cool designs" "Well, we could make you a pink one, but what design would you…

>"Hello, I'd like to buy a custom car." How did you even get that Qs coming? For a bootstrapped startup selling to enterprises figuring that out itself is half the battle

You are very right :) If you don't have an existing relationship with people who have budgets, my only guess is to have a blog that attracts inbound leads. I'd imagine x% of leads don't have a budget or buying desire though.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#117

Post by depaya »

zeptonaut22 wrote: post #113
javajosh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I suggest you add "footnotes on hover"? I feel like this is the ultimate expression of the idea, and books would do it that way if they could.

Hover is a great experience on desktop, but it annoyingly requires having a separate solution for mobile. Right now 60+% of the traffic on the site is from mobile devices, so figuring out something (hopefully simple and very lightweight) that works for both mobile and desktop is the goal. Your suggestion is noted, though!

Along these lines, I've always liked the system Randall uses for What If: https://what-if.xkcd.com/

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#118

Post by musingsole »

lr4444lr wrote: post #91

The main problem here is that houses and software have wildly different marginal costs It is "a" problem, I'll even admit a major one, but it's not the main problem. The main problem is the expectation of continual customization and improvement at the input of the customer. Imagine if houses were built by you contracting with the developer, and after the initial blueprint and plans were agreed to, every two or 4 week…

I wish my house had an on-going development agreement. Instead, I have to find skilled labor and negotiate the work every time I want to change something! Which leads me to often changing it myself and ending up with a worse result for it!

Also, that relationship is pretty much what you can get for several months when commissioning a house in a subdevelopment or similar. Every month or week, you come by to have another conversation on a different set of customization options.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#119

Post by Existenceblinks »

> If you’re building software - particularly new software that hasn’t already found a market -this underscores the importance of being good at what you do: if you’re just average (or more precisely, just median), you’re creating zero value.

I have a hard time selling my cool app, now i wanted to go back to my ex-boss. (tear of not yet unemployable)

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#120

Post by [deleted] »

andi999 wrote: post #80
sirsinsalot wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having friends in pharma too, I never hear anything about the commercial end that I don't find disgusting. I get that like any business the goal is maximizing wealth, but feeling empathy for the "customer" makes the margins and decisions seem sickening. Honestly, the idealist in me says healthcare/pharma/research should be publicly owned and operated.

It costs one billion dollar(often much more) to go from zero to market for a new pharmaceutical product. Often there even is no product at the end. Of course there has to be big payday if it succeeds.

[deleted]
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