Wonder if they could have raised the yearly sub or added a tier to make that instead?
Bitwarden raises $100M
281–290 of 522 posts
Re: Bitwarden raises $100M
#282Ho the sweet irony of people praising them over 1password not two weeks ago. Queue the typical HN, "I switched from Bitwarden to X" in a couple of weeks.
The differentce is that Bitwarden is 100% open source (clients and server).
If they do something stupid, I'll run one of 2 OSS servers available and it's done (or have someone else host it for me).
Re: Bitwarden raises $100M
#283Honest question: what's the main benefit to using a password manager?
Imo: Effortslessly different passwords everywhere. So if one of your passwords is leaked, you don't have to change passwords for all accounts.
Re: Bitwarden raises $100M
#284I switched to Bitwarden when LastPass started using silly tactics to make customers pay. I didn't switch because of the price - the service pricing of Bitwarden was a pleasant surprise. I switched because I lost all trust in LastPass. Managing credentials and sensitive information is all about trust. The second I lose trust in that kind of service, I don't just stop using it, I will most likely never even consider co…
Ugh, I'm paying for LastPass because I haven't gotten around to switching to Bitwarden yet. They list a monthly price, but they actually charge you annually, so you're essentially locked in for a year (if you want to make the most of your money).
Pay the monthly fee for 2 months, then if you like it go annual. Assume you like it, you are going to be using it for a year anyway.
Re: Bitwarden raises $100M
#285If you're a Bitwarden user and this doesn't worry you, you haven't been paying attention to the history of almost every company that has accepted VC funds. It doesn't matter how well intentioned the founders are - once you accept that kind of money, it's not your product anymore. You are now in the business of making money, nothing else, and those skewed incentives will start bleeding into their product and business…
Not gonna lie, I'm having a hard time justifying the 3-4x increase in cost for Padloc vs. Bitwarden. The pricing is only rivaled by 1Password, which makes it a hard sell to me...
Well, there is the problem, isn't it? If people aren't willing to pay what amounts to a cup of coffee a month for a service they rely on daily, how are companies supposed to build a sustainable business without raising money?
Re: Bitwarden raises $100M
#286I'm not referring to Bitwarden here but isn't this the standard M.O. of any SV startup? 1. Release great product for free 2. Attract as many free users as possible to signal growth to investors 3. Keep running the unprofitable free tier at a loss as long as possible using your massive VC war chest, while locking in your users with various gotchas 4. Once you reach critical scale and gained mass user adoption and you'…
Full disclosure, I'm a paying user of Bitwarden. I think for BW this kind of falls apart at #3. The main draw of this product for me and many others is that it's actually pretty no-frills. It's also broadly compatible with importing and exporting between dozens of other password managers. That said, this could be a blind spot for me. Let me know if there's any gotchas I should know about here.
If we take them at their word that they're committed to keeping a fully-featured free version, what options do they have to make back a multiple of that $100 million for their investors? What many other companies have done in the past is to add a lot of new features. There are many examples of a simple, no-frills application turning into a bloated, complicated one, with a tiered subscription system. Ultimately a less streamlined, more expensive version of what it was before the funding.
Re: Bitwarden raises $100M
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only that but even the clients are open source ( https://github.com/bitwarden/clients ). There's even an unofficial Rust reimplementation of the server which is even better. Parent post is spreading FUD on this one.
The product being open source doesn't prevent the situation the OP mentions. It just provides a mitigation or a workaround by forking. I also hope it won't happen but many good projects have gone this way before. In this case the investment is not for the password manager but for a new identity service. However if that doesn't end up providing the promised results, the shareholders will start looking at the existing…
There is already a well-maintained third party implementation of the server.
Re: Bitwarden raises $100M
#288Shit.
Re: Bitwarden raises $100M
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
*10 billion back.
How is that realistic? If they expect to get 10 billion in 10 years, they need to have 100 million paying users (if they charge $10 per user per year), which is like the entire active users count of StackOverflow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_...
$10B back in equity, not in profits. Depending on government policy and market sentiments, then it may only require keeping a promising trajectory.
Re: Bitwarden raises $100M
#290Whatever the fuck do they need this for? I just cannot see any good reason to raise $100M. Hell, $10M might be too much.