Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Selling SaaS in Germany

embedworkflow.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 32 posts

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#21

Post by leonidasrup »

eigenspace wrote: post #18
adrianmsmith wrote: post #6

I feel this article is saying people from UK/US/etc. want to maximize upside, and people from DACH (Germany etc.) want to minimize downside. I was a bit shocked when I talked to an Austrian colleague once and they told me they wanted to get into investing, but losing any money at any time was completely unacceptable. They had looked at investing in S&P 500 ETFs etc., but felt they must have misunderstood something, a…

If you invested in the S&P 500 in 1968, you'd be waiting until 1992 before you saw any return on that investment after accounting for inflation, and the inflation adjusted S&P 500 was on a net-losing streak for the whole period from 1968 to 1982 before it started going up again. People believe the line will always go up, and maybe it will, but it's still at least possible for it to be on a quite painfully downward tr…

Very interesting trend is S&P 500 to Gold Ratio.

https://www.macrotrends.net/1437/sp500-to-gold-ratio-chart

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#22

Post by d1ss0nanz »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #8
d1ss0nanz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. And even for Tailscale we use a European alternative (Xplicittrust), because this aggressive growth of VC backed American tech is a real turn-off. We have seen where that leads often enough by now.

A bit turned off by their 'contact us for pricing' line. Why not show your pricing like any other provider does?

They only sell indirectly. Common concept in Europe.

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#23

Post by l23k4 »

danpalmer wrote: post #3

In the UK as a startup we found buying Silicon Valley SaaS tools to be a bit different sometimes in similar ways. Europe, even the UK, prices tech startup significantly lower than the US (a colleague once said that in the US you get funding to turn an idea into execution, in Europe you get funding to turn your execution into money), plus we were tech/retail, so our valuation was just never the same as a pure-tech (or…

Funny, I've recently (and repeatedly) had the exact opposite experience while negotiating SaaS contracts for my largely London-based startup.

Contact UK sales team? They don't believe we could even use their product because we're not a BigCo with thousands of employees. After weeks of back and forth calls, they ask us to pay $100k to get "certified" for API access, with further details on pricing available afterwards. Endless warnings about multiple customers purchasing the API product but lacking the technical ability to implement it.

Contact US sales team? Contract signed and account set up within 2 days, $3k a month. Same company, same product.

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#24

Post by odiroot »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #6

I feel this article is saying people from UK/US/etc. want to maximize upside, and people from DACH (Germany etc.) want to minimize downside. I was a bit shocked when I talked to an Austrian colleague once and they told me they wanted to get into investing, but losing any money at any time was completely unacceptable. They had looked at investing in S&P 500 ETFs etc., but felt they must have misunderstood something, a…

And that's why real estate market is so bad in DE/AT. Folks are terrified of investing in stock market, even through ETFs.

So it's either put everything in a Sparkonto, where it gets eaten by inflation or buy housing.

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#25

Post by izacus »

eigenspace wrote: post #20
niemandhier wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought it was because of the stickers we had to put on our cars if we went abroad. Germany had “D” Austria “A” Switzerland “CH”

Sure, that might be where that choice of abbreviation started, but I think that one outcompeted the other possible ways to abbreviate it because of the connection to the word for "roof" was evocative, and made for good wordplay. Sidenote, I always thought Dachli was an especially great extension. 'Li' for Liechtenstein here plays the double-role of also being the diminutive form in Swiss German and some south German…

I think you might be looking too much into an abbreviation which is simply the easiest to pronounce of country codes.

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#26

Post by bonesss »

l23k4 wrote: post #23
danpalmer wrote: post #3

In the UK as a startup we found buying Silicon Valley SaaS tools to be a bit different sometimes in similar ways. Europe, even the UK, prices tech startup significantly lower than the US (a colleague once said that in the US you get funding to turn an idea into execution, in Europe you get funding to turn your execution into money), plus we were tech/retail, so our valuation was just never the same as a pure-tech (or…

Funny, I've recently (and repeatedly) had the exact opposite experience while negotiating SaaS contracts for my largely London-based startup. Contact UK sales team? They don't believe we could even use their product because we're not a BigCo with thousands of employees. After weeks of back and forth calls, they ask us to pay $100k to get "certified" for API access, with further details on pricing available afterwards…

> customers purchasing the API product but lacking the technical ability to implement it

Oh, wow, salesdrone. Sell me harder on what a good interface you’re selling.

What else, do we have occasional non-reproducible behaviour? Frequent stability and scaling issues? … … non-standard error codes, dare I hope?

Don’t tell me, the excitement is in finding out the hard way, just take our credit cards.

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#27

Post by sureglymop »

eigenspace wrote: post #20
niemandhier wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought it was because of the stickers we had to put on our cars if we went abroad. Germany had “D” Austria “A” Switzerland “CH”

Sure, that might be where that choice of abbreviation started, but I think that one outcompeted the other possible ways to abbreviate it because of the connection to the word for "roof" was evocative, and made for good wordplay. Sidenote, I always thought Dachli was an especially great extension. 'Li' for Liechtenstein here plays the double-role of also being the diminutive form in Swiss German and some south German…

Interesting, though in Swiss German I think it would be Dächli over Dachli in any dialect, kind of making it not work. Nestli works, Sackli also doesn't. Would have to be Säckli.

Maybe this is confusing due to the Brotli compression algorithm. In that case, it should also be Brötli but was probably a pragmatic choice to change the ö to an o.

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#28

Post by l23k4 »

bonesss wrote: post #26
l23k4 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I've recently (and repeatedly) had the exact opposite experience while negotiating SaaS contracts for my largely London-based startup. Contact UK sales team? They don't believe we could even use their product because we're not a BigCo with thousands of employees. After weeks of back and forth calls, they ask us to pay $100k to get "certified" for API access, with further details on pricing available afterwards…

> customers purchasing the API product but lacking the technical ability to implement it Oh, wow, salesdrone. Sell me harder on what a good interface you’re selling. What else, do we have occasional non-reproducible behaviour? Frequent stability and scaling issues? … … non-standard error codes, dare I hope? Don’t tell me, the excitement is in finding out the hard way, just take our credit cards.

That particular API is actually perfectly fine, stable and relatively pleasant to work with. I have absolutely no idea what the UK sales team was trying to do. Some kind of negging? Perhaps they trained at Tate university.

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#29

Post by MichaelZuo »

niemandhier wrote: post #16

ISO 27001 and 27017 force you to deal with potential exit scenarios early on. In DACH you often need both to get public contracts. I also noticed that costumers are weary of American cloud solutions and SaaS solutions. Most are aware that they already are one White-House-decision away from being non operational and do not want to make things worse.

On premise solutions (or at least fully in country) are definitely preferred in most of the world.

They might not pay a 10x premium, but a 2x premium definitely. Even written guarantees from established American firms are nowadays seen as a bit lacking in credibility.

Re: Selling SaaS in Germany

#30

Post by fakedang »

jpalomaki wrote: post #9

How about the payments, what is the easiest way from corporate customer perspective in DACH? Let's say for smaller subscriptions, <1000€/month?

You missed the point of the article, which is that DACH places more importance on Compliance, Security and Stability. Those are the first questions first and foremost, and because they are expensive questions, you have to charge more than <€1000/month.
Post reply on HN