4 ms·

Don't let anyone overpay you

18 points by infodroid 10y ago

quantumhobbit 10y ago
Would it be better to treat these enterprises customers' feature requests as Kickstarter stretch goals instead of a separate sales pipeline? If BigCo really wants a feature, and it is a feature all customers could use, maybe let them pay you to implement it and then roll out the feature to everyone. Some enterprises would still want special attention; you can ignore them. You still have the problem of unstable funding, but that is also true for Kickstarter or even VC type funding.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- bhouston 10y ago
  > Would it be better to treat these enterprises customers' feature requests as Kickstarter stretch goals instead of a separate sales pipeline? If BigCo really wants a feature, and it is a feature all customers could use, maybe let them pay you to implement it and then roll out the feature to everyone. Exactly. :)
- abricot 10y ago
  That would leave out all the BigCo specific features that benefits noone else. And often, these features are critical for BigCo to continue using the vendor.
bhouston 10y ago
A lot of companies get large by serving whales -- Oracle, IBM, Microsoft. Also it is well known that there is an 80:20 rule in customers, 20% of customers are responsible for 80% of your revenue. He seems to be saying do not serve these 20% of customers. I think you need to achieve balance. No one should say no to money, especially when it is a lot and you can align it with your long-term interests. You should say no if the projects are not aligned with your long-term interests though, because you are then a consulting company.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  > it is well known that there is an 80:20 It is well heard, it is not well known - this would require more than vague hand-wavy logics. There is also an 80:20 rule wrt employee value, (that always seems to benefit the sayers of such a rule).
mizchief2 10y ago
I think the right approach is to stick to your single product and don't get bogged down with one big client's special needs. If a big company says they would buy tones of subscriptions / licenses if you had feature X, and feature X doesn't disrupt your core product and enough other people would buy your product or keep renewing if you had feature X, then go ahead and implement it. Then I think the other approach is to make your app moduler enough that 3rd parties can customize and extend your platform to fit special needs clients.
fenesiistvan 10y ago
And on basecamp homepage i see references such as NASA. They pay the same low price?
dmh2000 10y ago
one-off projects for 'special' customers can turn into support nightmares and drain your personnel resources. So besides taking some big $ for NRE, it would be smart to require, for example, a 5 year support contract with a hefty price tag.

18 points by infodroid 10y ago

Would it be better to treat these enterprises customers' feature requests as Kickstarter stretch goals instead of a separate sales pipeline? If BigCo really wants a feature, and it is a feature all customers could use, maybe let them pay you to implement it and then roll out the feature to everyone. Some enterprises would still want special attention; you can ignore them. You still have the problem of unstable funding, but that is also true for Kickstarter or even VC type funding.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bhouston 10y ago
> Would it be better to treat these enterprises customers' feature requests as Kickstarter stretch goals instead of a separate sales pipeline? If BigCo really wants a feature, and it is a feature all customers could use, maybe let them pay you to implement it and then roll out the feature to everyone. Exactly. :)
abricot 10y ago
That would leave out all the BigCo specific features that benefits noone else. And often, these features are critical for BigCo to continue using the vendor.

bhouston 10y ago

A lot of companies get large by serving whales -- Oracle, IBM, Microsoft. Also it is well known that there is an 80:20 rule in customers, 20% of customers are responsible for 80% of your revenue. He seems to be saying do not serve these 20% of customers. I think you need to achieve balance. No one should say no to money, especially when it is a lot and you can align it with your long-term interests. You should say no if the projects are not aligned with your long-term interests though, because you are then a consulting company.

Chris2048 10y ago
> it is well known that there is an 80:20 It is well heard, it is not well known - this would require more than vague hand-wavy logics. There is also an 80:20 rule wrt employee value, (that always seems to benefit the sayers of such a rule).

mizchief2 10y ago

I think the right approach is to stick to your single product and don't get bogged down with one big client's special needs. If a big company says they would buy tones of subscriptions / licenses if you had feature X, and feature X doesn't disrupt your core product and enough other people would buy your product or keep renewing if you had feature X, then go ahead and implement it. Then I think the other approach is to make your app moduler enough that 3rd parties can customize and extend your platform to fit special needs clients.

fenesiistvan 10y ago

And on basecamp homepage i see references such as NASA. They pay the same low price?

dmh2000 10y ago

one-off projects for 'special' customers can turn into support nightmares and drain your personnel resources. So besides taking some big $ for NRE, it would be smart to require, for example, a 5 year support contract with a hefty price tag.