Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"
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Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"
#2Lovely; a monthly sub to an article talking about monthly subs. You have to realise I will never, ever, going to pay ‘thebaffler’ and especially an article explaining that everyone wants subscriptions in a site that gives me one article and the rest is a subscription.
Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"
#3It’s interesting to see my industry described from a different point of view.
It misses the key point of the economics of subscriptions: a single up front fee is a disincentive to the constant maintenance that delivers the single biggest piece of value to the customer, that being the continued existence of the software. Instead it creates an incentive to add lines to the marketing BS on this year’s release and prioritises new customers over existing.
Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"
#4To me, Obsidian is a perfect example of how to get SaaS-revenue without making the user captive: All data is stored in an accessible form on the user hardware, and what you pay for is sync.
X-user kepano (who is a/the creator of Obsidian) has some nice insights on this _file over app_ philosophy.
Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"
#5Thoma Bravo the “bridge trolls of enterprise software,”
they are domestic terrorists if you ask me... because for the majority of people effected by them, its terrorifying. the way they operate is not in our countries/market best interest, but only the interests of a top few, who frankly include real global terrorists as members of the fund. The US should start to investigate PE, PE is crushing the economy under its own weight of consolidation and it hurts every day people.
Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"
#6These saas do innovate, what will I do without my confetti animation when I drag the issue to done.
Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"
#7Thoma Bravo the “bridge trolls of enterprise software,” they are domestic terrorists if you ask me... because for the majority of people effected by them, its terrorifying. the way they operate is not in our countries/market best interest, but only the interests of a top few, who frankly include real global terrorists as members of the fund. The US should start to investigate PE, PE is crushing the economy under its…
I've been blaming MBAs for ruining large companies for about 15 years. More and more of them were minted, and true to their word, they really have gotten good at extracting every last dollar out of whatever a company sells.
Now that small business owners are watching/listening constantly to small business gurus and hustle gurus, those businesses are screwing customers in ways I didnt see 20 years ago.
I keep in contact with many small business owners in construction and repair, and almost everyone now thinks that its better to get less work and just charge more. Sure they could pour 3 driveways a week and make $2k profit per driveway, but honestly they prefer to do and make $6k profit on 1 driveway a week and call it a day. I see this constantly in small low employee count construction companies.
Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"
#8It’s interesting to see my industry described from a different point of view. It misses the key point of the economics of subscriptions: a single up front fee is a disincentive to the constant maintenance that delivers the single biggest piece of value to the customer, that being the continued existence of the software. Instead it creates an incentive to add lines to the marketing BS on this year’s release and priori…
A subscription fee required for receiving updates for an application that you own seems fine.
A subscription fee required to avoid that the application you are using will be disabled remotely seems unacceptable.
The latter certainly does not create any incentive for the software vendor to improve the quality of their product and to fix its bugs.
On the contrary, the latter business model provides a stream of revenue for no work, so the vendor is encouraged to stop any maintenance work for their product, much more than when the customer makes a one-time payment. This has been amply demonstrated by the behavior of Adobe, Broadcom and the like.
Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"
#9Thoma Bravo the “bridge trolls of enterprise software,” they are domestic terrorists if you ask me... because for the majority of people effected by them, its terrorifying. the way they operate is not in our countries/market best interest, but only the interests of a top few, who frankly include real global terrorists as members of the fund. The US should start to investigate PE, PE is crushing the economy under its…
I've been blaming MBAs for ruining large companies for about 15 years. More and more of them were minted, and true to their word, they really have gotten good at extracting every last dollar out of whatever a company sells. Now that small business owners are watching/listening constantly to small business gurus and hustle gurus, those businesses are screwing customers in ways I didnt see 20 years ago. I keep in conta…
> but honestly they prefer to do and make $6k profit on 1 driveway a week and call it a day.
If like many I see, they may also spend the spare time creating TikTok and Instagram videos how $12k is the absolute minimum a drive should cost
There must be sufficient amount of wealthy people needing jobs done who won't question quotes that the rest of us are just screwed and have to resort to DIY
Re: Spreadsheet Assassins – A short history of "software as a service"
#10The author shows notorious negative cases to invalidate a whole industry. Talks about the beauty of Excel more with a nostalgic look. If a company can replace a SaaS subscription with a process in which some employees share an Excel file, they don't need other software at all. Any software product (SaaS included) what tries to sell is a methodology or a way to do the things, condensing the know-how of an industry; whereas an Excel file most of the time means a clumsy attempt by someone to bring some order to the process. The data dependency is something governments should regulate, forcing easy portability. Of course, after years of using a specific tool it is natural to create a dependency, but it could be considered a tax from modern life as the author himself explains, it's something you cannot escape from. Or at least, the change will not involve just cancelling all your company SaaS subscriptions