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Why is selling software so weird?

zeptonaut.com

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Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#131

Post by wpietri »

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 know somebody who used to work for a custom home builder; they did high-end primary and vacation homes. I promise you that many of their customers had approximately equivalent desires. What the homebuilder had was a well-honed process for channeling and managing those expectations.

We can have that in software too if we want it and work for it. But it requires building a ton of alignment among customer service, sales, design, construction, and executive staff. Everybody who talks to the customer has to know what to say and how to direct requests. Everybody needs to know what they can say yes to easily and what has to get estimated, approved, and charged.

But that in turn requires extremely skilled and disciplined management, something our industry is not oversupplied with. The Agile movement gave us tools to make that work (CI, CD, good testing practices, refactoring), but that only works in a particular envelope of management competence. Outside of that, it's GIGO.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#132

Post by pwr-electronics »

marcosdumay wrote: post #124
photochemsyn wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> from the academic biotech sector Yes, academics will rewrite proprietary software. Collaborating is what they do, and Free Software is done basically the same way they do everything. They would rewrite it if it was free too. Business will have a harder time doing the same.

The business opportunity is in software that's inseparable from the hardware. Academics won't work on that because they don't do product development.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#133

Post by hadlock »

Low volume enterprise software is effectively selling perpetual professional services for a company, with access/using a very specific proprietary tool. Selling the software is a lot like dating, the company buying your professional services wants to know who you are and how effective you'll be, before the commit to you for 3-5 years, maybe longer.

If you were just selling an API to a voice transcription service, that's great but there's very little economic moat and now you're in a Race To The Bottom with every other voice transcription API service out there. At least with professional services, there's options for customization and the revenue stream becomes more sticky.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#134

Post by iggldiggl »

depaya wrote: post #117
zeptonaut22 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Agreed. I've pinched his popup implementation for my homepage and expanded it a little so that there's both a footnotes section with anchor links at the bottom for non-JS use and search engines, as well as the popup panels. E.g. https://www.buttercookie.de/The%20Burkiss%20Way/Transcripts/...

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#135

Post by mamcx »

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'…

Agree.

The "only" major problem is this space is that you need to be "connected" in ways that the most anonymous mass-market products not.

Also, is easier to get into nasty competition, corruption and all that stuff.

Is not always, and you can get good customers being decent, but are problems more prevalents on the space, and is VERY important you NAIL your contracts.

The first time the gorilla (like government!) come for you, is nerve cracking! And you can't shield behind "social media" to get out!

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#136

Post by avgDev »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #74
xmcqdpt2 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, the article doesn't take into account the fact that many developers work on in-house software and developer tooling that are not directly sold to anyone. Custom in-house development follows much the same principle as B2B products: the very high marginal cost are considered worth it by the business because of the degree of specialization they need or the advantage they gain over the competition. Of course I…

Caveat here is that you need to be a sufficiently large shop for this to pan out. Need the economies of scale on your side. I've seen several times smaller organizations attempting to adopt this model (because Google does it or whatever), with the result of the tools team being an enormous bottleneck for the organization.

I am an individual contributor, decently paid at a medium size business. I developed warehouse management systems, inventory managers etc. Very small team and projects have been quite successful.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#137

Post by TillE »

Existenceblinks wrote: post #121
paxys wrote: post #11

While all of this is mostly true, this problem isn't unique to software by a mile. The model of high fixed cost, low marginal cost applies to pretty much every consumer good or service sold in the industrial age. If you think publishing the first copy of a piece of software is hard, try setting up a new production line in a factory, or opening a restaurant, or producing a music album or movie. Yes it is hard to break…

Is there equivalent of "open source alternatives" and free forever plan for those other industries?

Yes, there's an enormous amount of free music out there. Free movies per se are less common, but the world is absolutely full of gratis video content. Some of this is legitimately ad-free (the open source analogy), and 99% of it is ad-free if you install a simple plugin or two.

I own a big pile of great free games from Epic, just from clicking a couple buttons every week or so. And yet I still buy games.

All of these industries are difficult, but that's just the reality of making stuff and selling it. I've spent quite a lot of time listening to indie game developers whine about how hard it is to make games, but the vast majority of what they complain about is just how any kind of big project works.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#138

Post by jsiaajdsdaa »

tarsinge wrote: post #59
jahewson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfectly describes the experience of a startup staring to sell to enterprise!

"We are looking for an economic daily driver. Please find our written requirements": unrealistic mix of a F1 car and a semi-truck.

If we just JIRA hard enough, we can break the laws of physics and propel a semi-truck at 187 MPH using only an electric battery and bike chain.

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#139

Post by [deleted] »

zeptonaut22 wrote: post #109
depaya wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered the very low-tech solution of simple HTML anchors to link back and forth?

Definitely! That's what my goal implementation will be compiled to, anyway. I use Hugo, a Go static site generator, to build the markdown posts into the site. Adding footnotes is just a matter of figuring out how to use the right syntax in the markdown, output the right anchors in the HTML, then sprinkling a little CSS on top. I'm 99% sure Hugo can do this, I've just learned to be wary of putting things in between my…

[deleted]

Re: Why is selling software so weird?

#140

Post by javajosh »

depaya wrote: post #117
zeptonaut22 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Oh thanks, I really like this variant. It needs a name: click-to-hover, perhaps?
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