721–730 of 790 posts
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Yup, and they think pissing people off is worth it (for their expected benefit). And... they're probably right. People have short term memories and other things to worry about.
What's the cost of pissing free-tier people off? None of this has really impacted paying customers, right?
People should understand this: A free tier is a loss-leader, intended to support sales of the paid product. If too many “…have been happily using Slack’s free plan for years”, then Slack will have to change the terms. Generally, storage and access to storage cost money. If you aren’t paying for it, it is definitely temporary, whether anyone says it explicitly or not. I don’t just mean in a “nothing lasts forever” way…
Everybody understands this. Here’s what companies don’t understand: if you promote your product through a loss leader — which is arguably how Slack became popular in the first place — changing your pricing at a later date will piss people off. You’re trying to put the blame on the consumer here which never makes any sense from a business perspective. If your loss-leading pricing strategy was unsustainable from the st…
OpenSource projects who relied on “free” slack were told by many, many people they were being stupid. And here is why.
I don't get this attitude. For an open source projects, especially ones not funded, properly utilizing free tools is key to success.
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So you're suggesting any startup that can't get its unit economics to work should have its founders sent to jail?
Under certain circumstances, the IRS will consider your business a hobby if it fails to make a profit. The consequence being that you may no longer write off your business expenses on your taxes.
People should understand this: A free tier is a loss-leader, intended to support sales of the paid product. If too many “…have been happily using Slack’s free plan for years”, then Slack will have to change the terms. Generally, storage and access to storage cost money. If you aren’t paying for it, it is definitely temporary, whether anyone says it explicitly or not. I don’t just mean in a “nothing lasts forever” way…
It's interesting (and sad) how the forums of yesteryear have essentially gone away entirely, with no good solutions popping up to replace them. I know they were/are incredibly prone to security issues, but they were good at one thing and one thing only: community. I recall spending a crazy amount of time refreshing the index on a site called TradeGamesNow (and to a lesser degree CheapAssGamer) waiting for new posts/c…
> It's interesting (and sad) how the forums of yesteryear have essentially gone away entirely May phpBB and its ilk burn in hell. I understand and recognize the value of private/self-hosted forums (I'm commenting on HN after all!) However the design principles of phpBB and similar forum software of the early 2000s were horrendous, and single-handedly held me back from participating in some communities I would have li…
I agree with your point about signatures and initial sign-up being clutter.
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DIGG blew its userbase by fucking up the UX. Reddit is on path to do same. If reddit ever kills old.reddit, exodus will happen. - But seriously, a designer should be thinking about the consumption/participation model as opposed to just the eyeballs/adwords-please-kill-me-now model... The consumption and participation of a site is direct to the UX - and when DIGG basically made it a 100% consumption push, while also m…
> Reddit is on path to do same. If reddit ever kills old.reddit, exodus will happen. I use Reddit exclusively in the "old" mode, but I wonder how impactful would this be. The Reddit redesign was basically done to cater to a wider audience (9gag, TikTok, etc). I feel that either at this point or in the near future the number of people that use old.reddit.com exclusively will be a small percentage of the whole lot of p…
People should understand this: A free tier is a loss-leader, intended to support sales of the paid product. If too many “…have been happily using Slack’s free plan for years”, then Slack will have to change the terms. Generally, storage and access to storage cost money. If you aren’t paying for it, it is definitely temporary, whether anyone says it explicitly or not. I don’t just mean in a “nothing lasts forever” way…
Everybody understands this. Here’s what companies don’t understand: if you promote your product through a loss leader — which is arguably how Slack became popular in the first place — changing your pricing at a later date will piss people off. You’re trying to put the blame on the consumer here which never makes any sense from a business perspective. If your loss-leading pricing strategy was unsustainable from the st…
An exodus of free tier users whom Slack doesn’t want anyways, or an exodus of paying customers?
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I think this should be outlawed. So many industries destroyed by cheap vc money, and then trying to raise prices once everyone else is gone. You can lose money doing research all you want, but the moment you start interacting with the market there should be a time limit until you can get your unit economics to work, or get out.
I agree - "free" should be anti-competitive. Today it is incredibly hard for any startup to compete with the "free" products of BigTech. And that is why in this industry, getting acquired by them is the only really viable exit option available for many startups.