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I'm totally amazed by this (10k/month from postico, mac app only). What _is_ your selling point for postico? I'm genuinely curious since there are other SQL cl

I'm totally amazed by this (10k/month from postico, mac app only). What _is_ your selling point for postico? I'm genuinely curious since there are other SQL client apps out there that either: 1) free or 2) F/OSS or 3) cross-platforms. Granted they may not look as "beautiful" as yours but gosh... they work out of the box... Man I need to do more market research....

jakobegger 10y ago
When you use an app professionally, it doesn't matter if it is free or if it costs $40. If it saves you one hour of work, it's worth the price. It also doesn't matter if the app is cross-platform. Most people use only a single platform, and it turns out that Macs are very popular among my target audience (web developers & data analysts). It also doesn't need to support a lot of features. I focussed on features that are important for web developers and data analysts, and I made sure they work really well. Yeah, pgAdmin has more admin features, but my users don't care about that. I discovered most of what I know of the market as I went along, by talking to customers. Nobody bought the early versions of my app; it took three years of iterating on customer feedback to get to 10k a month. Talking to (potential) customers is really important. In the beginning, I thought that DB admins would be my target audience. But from talking to people at pgConf, I discovered that most PostgreSQL admins don't care about GUIs, but web developers do. So that's where I put my focus. I think the most important choice I made in the beginning was to focus on PostgreSQL rather than MySQL. The latter might be 10x as popular, but PostgrSQL is gaining popularity and growing, and there's lots of interest in PostgreSQL -- perfect conditions for starting a business.
- edwinnathaniel 10y ago
  Thank you for this great advise! I guess I hang out with the wrong circle ;). Most developers around me typically would just download something that is free (if it's cross-platform it gets +1 added-value since often we switch between Windows and Ubuntu). Case and Point: Eclipse vs IntelliJ. I bought IntelliJ during the Doomsday discount (75% discount) but people around me still using Eclipse until some event where they decided to move to the "free" (community) version of IntelliJ. I haven't gone back to Eclipse after that... I'm just amazed with your story. I need to "get out" more and talk to more people... seriously...
  - jakobegger 10y ago
    IntelliJ is a lot more expensive than $40. At their price point, I'd assume they mostly target enterprise customers, and not so much individual developers. Maybe that's another selling point for my app? Most other database software is targeted at enterprise customers (endless feature checklists, a price of $500 per seat); whereas I mostly target individual developers.

jakobegger 10y ago

When you use an app professionally, it doesn't matter if it is free or if it costs $40. If it saves you one hour of work, it's worth the price. It also doesn't matter if the app is cross-platform. Most people use only a single platform, and it turns out that Macs are very popular among my target audience (web developers & data analysts). It also doesn't need to support a lot of features. I focussed on features that are important for web developers and data analysts, and I made sure they work really well. Yeah, pgAdmin has more admin features, but my users don't care about that. I discovered most of what I know of the market as I went along, by talking to customers. Nobody bought the early versions of my app; it took three years of iterating on customer feedback to get to 10k a month. Talking to (potential) customers is really important. In the beginning, I thought that DB admins would be my target audience. But from talking to people at pgConf, I discovered that most PostgreSQL admins don't care about GUIs, but web developers do. So that's where I put my focus. I think the most important choice I made in the beginning was to focus on PostgreSQL rather than MySQL. The latter might be 10x as popular, but PostgrSQL is gaining popularity and growing, and there's lots of interest in PostgreSQL -- perfect conditions for starting a business.

edwinnathaniel 10y ago
Thank you for this great advise! I guess I hang out with the wrong circle ;). Most developers around me typically would just download something that is free (if it's cross-platform it gets +1 added-value since often we switch between Windows and Ubuntu). Case and Point: Eclipse vs IntelliJ. I bought IntelliJ during the Doomsday discount (75% discount) but people around me still using Eclipse until some event where they decided to move to the "free" (community) version of IntelliJ. I haven't gone back to Eclipse after that... I'm just amazed with your story. I need to "get out" more and talk to more people... seriously...
- jakobegger 10y ago
  IntelliJ is a lot more expensive than $40. At their price point, I'd assume they mostly target enterprise customers, and not so much individual developers. Maybe that's another selling point for my app? Most other database software is targeted at enterprise customers (endless feature checklists, a price of $500 per seat); whereas I mostly target individual developers.