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The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

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Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#251

Post by travisjungroth »

ooobit2 wrote: post #90
013a wrote: post #57

I can call out one example of a poorly executed price raise: Apollo Engine ( https://www.apollographql.com/pricing ) There was a time when they charged for data points/performance traces ingested into the system. At our scale, we were paying around $100/month. We were prepared to scale that to their, I think it was, $550/month plan when our usage got that high. They relatively recently changed their structure to char…

From an SE/SO professional, can I rant here for a moment? Marketing and Product rag on Sales a lot for discounting. Nevermind the fact that we own the touchpoints with an account, so it only makes sense that we'd know what any individual account needs. I've had this issue with Marketing and Product professionals since I started in Sales, and even more-so when I took over Sales Enablement and Sales Ops. For one, prici…

Never sell your roadmap. $50k isn’t worth one of the few advantages startups have: agility. It’s also distracting. You get to have these fun hypothetical conversations instead of talking about the product you have. Sell what’s on the truck.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#252

Post by travisjungroth »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #167
boulos wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In behavioral economics that’s sometimes referred to as “social norms versus market norms” [first useful link, 1]. The example given (I think it’s via Ariely) is that you wouldn’t pay your friend to have cooked you dinner. This is the same thing: there’s social contract value in helping your friend out, and they’re showing appreciation with a token . In fact, if you friend offers you more money than the pizza and bee…

Interesting comment! I have this relatively unconventional theory that, if we use automation just right and make the cost of food production, delivery, and preparation low enough, and also do so where ownership of the machinery is distributed throughout society, that we could make it a social norm to give anyone who needs it free food. All in a voluntary system. We just need to make the actual cost of the whole suppl…

It’ll be much like water in most of the world: free on a personal scale.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#253

Post by gnopgnip »

013a wrote: post #57

I can call out one example of a poorly executed price raise: Apollo Engine ( https://www.apollographql.com/pricing ) There was a time when they charged for data points/performance traces ingested into the system. At our scale, we were paying around $100/month. We were prepared to scale that to their, I think it was, $550/month plan when our usage got that high. They relatively recently changed their structure to char…

The corollary to this is a lot of businesses don't care about $1500 a month, or $10k+ a month, or rather they see an appropriate amount of value, or they value not having to switch. It makes more sense for Apollo to focus on this business. And that is especially true if they have a product that is approaching a commodity.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#254

Post by travisjungroth »

clairity wrote: post #92
afterburner wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there something wrong with the way the exit survey was asked/written? Because that is remarkable. Was maybe part of the issue that people leaving when the exit survey was being run (at "night") not representative of the visitors as a whole?

this is a well-known issue in market research, and survey design in particular. stated preferences are nearly useless in understanding customer segments and behavior. respondents have hundreds of different reasons for not answering with their true preferences (in this case, to not to pay more/separately). instead, you want to reveal preferences using techniques like conjoint analysis (not always feasible), which bett…

It’s pretty obvious when you look at things from an awkward level of first principles.

“Based on this forced social interaction of questioning strangers as they left the park, we have forecasted how different people entering the park will react to a commercial interaction.”

Seems shocking that it would ever work at all.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#255

Post by travisjungroth »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #117

This is a good cautionary tale and one I've seen played out in the tech industry with food. Even in the 80's it wasn't uncommon for a tech company to have a "beer bust" on Friday's where drinks and snacks were served as a social gathering for employees at the end of the work week. It was a turning point in employee relations when the VP of HR at Sun cancelled the weekly beer bust. Similarly at Google when they decide…

It’s important to remember that companies are staffed by primates.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#257

Post by mirimir »

So npr.org won't let me read unless I agree to be tracked. Which is illegal under GDPR, I think.

But in any case, I've realized something. In the URL, just replace "https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/" with "https://www.wbur.org/npr/" and the damn page just loads.

So I picked another npr.org article recently posted to HN: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/06/849996451/what-hamburgs-misst...

And yes, this URL loads without challenge: https://www.wbur.org/npr/849996451/what-hamburgs-missteps-in...

So hey :)

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#258

Post by apatters »

gav wrote: post #111
013a wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that. I suspect, generally speaking, per-user billing does not work for the vast majority of SaaS. It can really only work well in communication tools, where (1) most organizations receive a lot of value, (2) there's a network effect in play, and (3) expenses incurred by the provider generally correlate with the number of users. Slack. Jira. Notion. Etc. For an APM tool like Apollo, only one of the…

Per-user billing works when the value is obvious and the price is low. If you have a B2B SaaS product your goal should be optimizing for getting the maximum users in an organization. The more people who use your product: - The harder it is to move off your product - If people like the product, when they leave, they'll evangelize your product to their next employer - It's less likely that different teams/business unit…

> The thing that's crazy is that the cost to the SaaS provider has nothing to do with the number of users.

Surely their support costs scale with the number of users? This might explain some anti-growth behaviors, support is expensive and a lot of companies struggle to get it right.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#259

Post by listenallyall »

WalterBright wrote: post #248
listenallyall wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond economy class, of course the price is less of a factor (didn't realize that needed to be stated). "No two people paid the same price" is a myth, most certainly not true. Ever book 2+ seats at the same time? Airlines do use yield management techniques, however, which results in pricing that changes for the same resource over time. That's not A/B testing, and like anything that relies on a lot of forecasts as in…

> Beyond economy class economy+ class business class first class > Ever book 2+ seats at the same time? Ok, ya got me there. Ever book 2 seats not at the same time? > often lead to sub-optimal revenue totals Airlines are not stupid with their operations management, and expend a great deal of effort optimizing revenue.

Are you telling me you've surveyed every person on the plane to know for absolute sure nobody paid the same price? Do you think they create a unique fare code for every passenger? Of course they don't.

I never said airlines are stupid, I stated an opinion they are not "masters of a/b testing". You've not provided any evidence to convince me otherwise.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#260

Post by nl »

gav wrote: post #111
013a wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that. I suspect, generally speaking, per-user billing does not work for the vast majority of SaaS. It can really only work well in communication tools, where (1) most organizations receive a lot of value, (2) there's a network effect in play, and (3) expenses incurred by the provider generally correlate with the number of users. Slack. Jira. Notion. Etc. For an APM tool like Apollo, only one of the…

Per-user billing works when the value is obvious and the price is low. If you have a B2B SaaS product your goal should be optimizing for getting the maximum users in an organization. The more people who use your product: - The harder it is to move off your product - If people like the product, when they leave, they'll evangelize your product to their next employer - It's less likely that different teams/business unit…

In the financial systems/trading world high per-user pricing is considered normal.

Most "investment information"-type products are 25K-50K/user/year.

It's likely some people here will consider this low pricing, but it's a significantly different pricing model to the sell cheap, stack high $9 to $50/user/month type app.

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