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Yes, I purposely choose colourful language. Github is an amazing product, in part because they had $66M to spend making it amazing. Think about all of our other

by josho 10y ago

Yes, I purposely choose colourful language. Github is an amazing product, in part because they had $66M to spend making it amazing. Think about all of our other favourite pieces of software, and many will have the same story. This results in the marketplace having unrealistic expectations for software quality when the market size won't sustain VC levels of investment. Regarding your disbelief, you assume (like economists) that consumers are rational actors. They aren't. There are 2 reasons why the customer pushed back. One, they thought the price was unfair--e.g. "Hey MS Office costs me $5/mth, and your software which does less costs me several hundred a month, you charge too much." Second, the customer is already earning a significant salary, so an extra $5,000 a year isn't meaningful for him. (Yeh, crazy isn't it). This is our first sales effort and we are learning how to position the product to overcome these objections--part of the problem was that we didn't anticipate push back and didn't properly position the product to avoid these concerns.

dsacco 10y ago
I don't assume that consumers are rational actors, at least not in the aggregate or binary sense that the term is usually used. Theories involving rational actors usually use the terminology in groups, whereas I'm talking about an individual customer and using rationality as more of a sliding scale with percentiles. In this case, it seemed incredible to me that someone would be so irrational on that scale. However, you did clarify your example, which makes it easier to accept. Phrased this way, it seems as though a potential upside of $5,000 wasn't worth it for someone who is skeptical of your product and has free alternatives. Stated this way, I can understand how VCs cause market incentives that make your job more difficult.
m1sta_ 10y ago
Consumers are rational. They aren't unlimited in their ability to source and process information. We're not very good at understanding their behaviour.

by josho 10y ago

dsacco 10y ago

I don't assume that consumers are rational actors, at least not in the aggregate or binary sense that the term is usually used. Theories involving rational actors usually use the terminology in groups, whereas I'm talking about an individual customer and using rationality as more of a sliding scale with percentiles. In this case, it seemed incredible to me that someone would be so irrational on that scale. However, you did clarify your example, which makes it easier to accept. Phrased this way, it seems as though a potential upside of $5,000 wasn't worth it for someone who is skeptical of your product and has free alternatives. Stated this way, I can understand how VCs cause market incentives that make your job more difficult.

m1sta_ 10y ago

Consumers are rational. They aren't unlimited in their ability to source and process information. We're not very good at understanding their behaviour.