91–100 of 145 posts
Interesting how so many startups get a break by effectively email spamming (or “cold calling” as they refer to it). I’ve seen this a lot in stories like these as a way to get started and gain initial traction.
Semi-rhetorical question: why do customers accept something like this delivered in SaaS form? It seems so antithetical to customer obsession when this is the exact type of problem that lends itself well to a locally running application. Why not deliver this as a desktop application that users download and pay for one-time? There’s absolutely no need for an ongoing subscription to a backend service here. Outside of re…
Semi-rhetorical answer: 1. It still provides more value than the monthly subscription. 2. People have shown a greater willingness to pay for ongoing features and support in a SAAS model than in other formats. 3. It better aligns with the costs of support and maintenance that the provider needs to provide. 4. It's less risky for the consumer to get started. 5. There's no piracy or people decompiling your app and putti…
1, 4, and 6 align with the customer. 4 could be alleviated even with a local application a la Sublime Text. I concede 6 is marginally easier to manage, but then again represents a con from the customer perspective in that the software they’re using could disappear at any time since they don’t own it.
JetBrains model seems to represent the best compromise to the customer here: subscription fee for constant updates and support, cancel anytime and keep your current version with no updates or support.
2, 3, 5 benefit the business, not the customer. In fact 3 is probably the most beneficial to the business in that cost of support and maintenance isn’t aligned, they’re decoupled! Hence the 70-80% margins this company is touting.
5 is brutal as csallen said, but then again there are counterpoints to this in that people will certainly pay and not pirate for the right experience: iTunes, Kindle, etc. even when the pirated versions are readily available.
I appreciate your response.
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Semi-rhetorical answer: 1. It still provides more value than the monthly subscription. 2. People have shown a greater willingness to pay for ongoing features and support in a SAAS model than in other formats. 3. It better aligns with the costs of support and maintenance that the provider needs to provide. 4. It's less risky for the consumer to get started. 5. There's no piracy or people decompiling your app and putti…
I built and sold an installable application in the past, and #5 was brutal. For some reason it's rarely discussed.
Sounds nice... but Sigh , only iOS?
Semi-rhetorical question: why do customers accept something like this delivered in SaaS form? It seems so antithetical to customer obsession when this is the exact type of problem that lends itself well to a locally running application. Why not deliver this as a desktop application that users download and pay for one-time? There’s absolutely no need for an ongoing subscription to a backend service here. Outside of re…
The main point people make about differentiating your digital product is to not compete on price. A lower price means less money for advertising and marketing, so a losing proposition. What you're proposing with the one-time upfront fee model is to compete on price, so smart entrepreneurs steer clear of that model.
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Semi-rhetorical answer: 1. It still provides more value than the monthly subscription. 2. People have shown a greater willingness to pay for ongoing features and support in a SAAS model than in other formats. 3. It better aligns with the costs of support and maintenance that the provider needs to provide. 4. It's less risky for the consumer to get started. 5. There's no piracy or people decompiling your app and putti…
All fair points, a mix of which some focus on customer benefit and others on benefit to the business. Perhaps the motivation behind my question was wondering whether there’s an opportunity to eat SaaS margins with products that compete by changing the distribution, and whether there’s any market data to support that hypothesis. 1, 4, and 6 align with the customer. 4 could be alleviated even with a local application a…
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Sure! Previously, podcasters and musicians didn't have a very engaging way to share audio on social media. We built Wavve so creators can easily convert audio files into a branded video with an animated waveform. Here's our Twitter and Instagram accounts with some examples of what's possible: https://www.instagram.com/getwavve https://twitter.com/wavve
Oh, doesn't seem like very much.
The more difficult part:
- Understanding the work that goes into making and releasing a podcast
- Figuring out that a step in the process is not being done efficiently
- Determining a balanced set of features whose delivery and maintenance cost is low enough that people in industry will benefit from paying for them
- Marketing your software to potential customers
- Convincing them that they will benefit from purchasing your software
- Maintaining the software to satisfy your customer base
- Exploring and releasing new features to stay ahead of your inevitable competition if the product is successful
- Taking the initial risk to start development
But everybody here knows that already.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Semi-rhetorical answer: 1. It still provides more value than the monthly subscription. 2. People have shown a greater willingness to pay for ongoing features and support in a SAAS model than in other formats. 3. It better aligns with the costs of support and maintenance that the provider needs to provide. 4. It's less risky for the consumer to get started. 5. There's no piracy or people decompiling your app and putti…
All fair points, a mix of which some focus on customer benefit and others on benefit to the business. Perhaps the motivation behind my question was wondering whether there’s an opportunity to eat SaaS margins with products that compete by changing the distribution, and whether there’s any market data to support that hypothesis. 1, 4, and 6 align with the customer. 4 could be alleviated even with a local application a…
Microsoft Office, for example. $250 license cost every three years, or $99/year for the SaaS model. If you want to try it, you pay $10 for a month and if you don't like it you lost $10 rather than $250. And if you subscribe long term, the SaaS version's pricing is very much on par with the old style of selling software.
Question related to video encoding: We are spending quite a bit of money on Amazon ElasticTranscoder for video encoding. Wondering if anyone had experience or advices to selfhost that kind of service? Any project I should consider for a proof of concept?