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Bitwarden raises $100M

bitwarden.com

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Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#371

Post by dmix »

RileyJames wrote: post #82

We use BitWarden at work, we use their business/hosted offering. We pay them $3600 per year. Why is everyone so concerned? They’re popular enough in businesses. Their product is great for teams, hence why we pay for it. I’ve found it much better than alternatives. The killer feature for me has been safer account sharing, including 2FA (and I know it makes it somewhat redundant, but it’s safer than turning it off comp…

Indeed, they already have a business model, they won't need to cannibalize their open source password manager to make money here. They just need to grow the business side + offer new auth related services as they mention in the article.

LastPass tried to grow the B2C business which put more stress on the consumer product.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#372

Post by ayewo »

highwaylights wrote: post #240

I'd be really curious to know how much the move to passkeys has factored into this. I imagine it's an immediate threat to existing password managers.

I think this has been factored into their plans [1] of bringing "consumer ease-of-use to Business users" which reads like they are moving away from the consumer market where widespread adoption of passkey will materially affect the revenues of all password management vendors.

They are betting their future on the enterprise market and the announcement blog post links to their Partner [2] page—a central part of their strategy to gain a foot-hold in that market.

In the enterprise market, inertia and regulations cause user habits to change much slowly relative to the consumer market that Bitwarden is most familiar with, plus enterprises are not price sensitive, so they can get away with charging really high prices, to justify their huge capital raise.

1: https://bitwarden.com/blog/accelerating-value-for-bitwarden-...

2: https://bitwarden.com/partners/

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#373

Post by Ajedi32 »

JshWright wrote: post #119
411111111111111 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there already a standard for that: webauthn ? Hasn't really caught on, despite being several years in the making already

Sure, a standard exists, but that by itself isn't a great user experience. If you actually try to use something like a YubiKey you end up having to register multiple keys with each site to deal with lost key (assuming the site allows that in the first place). The you have to remember which keys correspond to which sites, and remember to get your backup key out each time you sign up somewhere new , etc. Google, Apple,…

I'm probably more excited about passkeys than most, but I don't see why you need $100M to add support for that. It's a pretty straightforward addition to existing password managers. Might even be easier to support than it is to build a user-friendly password autofill, all things considered.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#374

Post by unethical_ban »

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #322
kornhole wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people at Bitwarden and their supporters are familiar with countless examples of this playbook. Those tricks are not as easy to pull anymore. I have seen Bitwarden be very ethical in their business so far. I recommend it to my friends and family and to my company to pay for the service. It is a similar model to Nextcloud who successfully funds their business from governments and companies and provides it free to…

The people at Bitwarden and their supporters need to answer 1 simple question. How do they increase their valuation 10+x without pulling those tricks. Because that's what the VC funding demands. No VC is giving out $100mm for a 20% or even 100% return, which could possibly be achieved by simple growth. They're giving that money because they're expecting exponential return. Maybe there is an enterprise play somewhere…

Doubling money isn't good enough? Is the business plan that risky?

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#375

Post by sleepybrett »

kornhole wrote: post #184
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #131

I'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'…

The people at Bitwarden and their supporters are familiar with countless examples of this playbook. Those tricks are not as easy to pull anymore. I have seen Bitwarden be very ethical in their business so far. I recommend it to my friends and family and to my company to pay for the service. It is a similar model to Nextcloud who successfully funds their business from governments and companies and provides it free to…

... this just happened to 1password less than a year ago... what 'anymore' are you talking about?

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#376

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #342
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, good on you, but once you got that position, what's stopping you from monetizing your users by selling their personal data to advertisers? I don't understand why anyone would celebrate and worship monopolies? Publicly listed companies are not your friends. You're just a dollar sign for them.

The same thing that stops anything: terms of service. Also: no one is worshipping, and no monopoly has been mentioned. Nor has companies being anyone's friend. There is more non sequitur than content here :)

>The same thing that stops anything: terms of service.

That made me chuckle.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#377

Post by everforward »

bengale wrote: post #85
scarface74 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or 1Password could just suffer from the DropBox problem - it’s a feature not a product. Every company’s answer to that is also the same “we will target the enterprise”. They aren’t “doing well” if they still require outside funding.

A feature of what service though? The OS? iCloud keychain does this, it's not a compelling offering though if you need to use any other OS. Something like Google? Not sure I'd want to risk my Google account ever getting locked and loosing access to all my other accounts. I'm not sure what that leaves.

The browser is the obvious option. Firefox and Chrome both implement ways to save passwords in the browsers. I believe Firefox has a service to sync them, Chrome may too (I don't use them, so I don't know).

They could reasonably tie in to whatever Office-suite you use (GSuite, Office 365).

In the enterprise, it could be part of a larger "credential management suite" product managed by security. Allow syncing and auditing of credentials, like "when was the last time this cred was changed?" with some kind of automation to generate and push a new credential when need be.

From the outside looking in, a basic credential manager doesn't seem complex enough to be a standalone product.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#378

Post by folkrav »

tengbretson wrote: post #316
folkrav wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that every single damn service out there is costing me a cup of coffee every month, I end up paying a couple of coffee jugs a month. Are we seriously going to shame customers for trying to cut some costs in this economic context? As a customer, what I can do is compare with the competition. Padloc is more expensive than basically every other option out there. And as far as we can tell, Bitwarden was already runni…

> Are we seriously going to shame customers for trying to cut some costs in this economic context? That all depends on the margins of what is being offered. If you are proposing they sell a dime's worth of product for a nickel, then I would see the above post as a much more polite version of the correct response, which is "get lost."

I have no idea of the margins, and expecting customers to know about your operating costs without either disclosing them outright or asking the question is an... interesting take. All I can realistically do is compare with the competition, and the competition is cheaper across the board. Therefore my initial comment.

I'd have no problem paying more for a good product if it brings me something. In the meantime, I'm still left pondering. "Get lost" would be a rather crappy way to treat customers simply asking questions, wouldn't it?

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#379

Post by bornfreddy »

kornhole wrote: post #330
lijogdfljk wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those tricks are not as easy to pull anymore. Arguably, they did with Bitwarden already, no? Ie even if they don't do anything bad - they still executed steps of free users and large VC checks. Which is to say, does it not seem like they've already executed the "trick"? Users are already there, they have cash in hand. Their motivations don't matter much here, we as users can only see their actions. But i don't foll…

The company is providing a service of vault hosting around the free software they maintain. Hosting and maintenance has many costs that need to be covered somehow, and we want them to improve the service. The hosting costs of individual users with a free though generous account is supplemented by paying companies and governments. Users are not locked in, as they can easily download their vaults and move to another so…

> The hosting costs of individual users with a free though generous account is supplemented by paying companies and governments.

I can think of a way to lower costs... :-/

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#380

Post by rurp »

latexr wrote: post #335
MaKleSoft wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I wish we’d stop with the cup of coffee comparison. Not everyone lives in the USA and drinks Starbucks. A cup of coffee costs 0.70€ where I live¹, cheaper than the cheapest (non-free) App Store app. Furthermore, I don’t drink coffee. For me it’s not about the price but the recurring cost and the lock in. I’d rather pay a larger sum upfront when I’m sure I can afford it and reevaluate when it’s time to upgrade than be…

Totally agree. Every single new subscription product someone buys that can't be run independently or avoid updates adds tech debt to their personal life. At some point that product will be killed, degraded, or made much more expensive. Software that can be purchased once and run indefinitely is all upside on the long tail.

I wish more companies followed the Jetbrains model where a subscription buys lasting access to the current version and recurring payments gets you continuous updates. It's easy to see why companies mostly avoid this model though; it's easier to squeeze users for money when you have them held captive.

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