5 ms·

I'm glad the people at Blackblaze really look like (from this writing and others) good people who want to run a successful business while doing right by their c

I'm glad the people at Blackblaze really look like (from this writing and others) good people who want to run a successful business while doing right by their customers. But... Jeez, clearly they did not hire patio11 While they technically did _raise_ prices, I'm quite certain they had a lot of leeway to have raised them a lot more

mherdeg 7y ago
Yeah he had some thoughts on how tarsnap should price itself at https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/03/fantasy-tarsnap/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/03/fantasy-tarsnap/ which I think suggests that he would consider Backblaze underpriced.
- csytan 7y ago
  It's funny running into this article for the first time. I've been using Tarsnap for a couple years now for our SAAS. After receiving the first month's email receipt for $0.25, I replied: saying something along the lines of "damn this is cheap! you could charge a lot more!". No reply of course. He's probably heard it a million times already. Having gained a bit more experience with pricing our own product this past year, I think it might not be as simple as "he sucks at business". Here's some potential (and highly speculative) reasons: - He may not need the money. He's got a respectable day job that pays well. - Higher prices mean less value for your users. Less value means less geek cred/love. I'd recommend Tarsnap to a fellow techie in a heartbeat. I probably wouldn't if it started at $100/mo. - Higher prices mean you sell to a different audience with more responsibility. High touch sales, support email threads with 10+ folks all demanding different things, handling exotic types of billing, etc. Many devs don't like dealing with this kind of stuff. - What if he's doing this as a lead gen for his consulting services?
  - cperciva 7y ago
    I replied: saying something along the lines of "damn this is cheap! you could charge a lot more!". No reply of course. He's probably heard it a million times already. I do hear that quite a bit, but I also hear a lot of people saying that Tarsnap is too expensive. I figure that as long as I have complaints coming from both directions I'm probably somewhere close to the right price. ;-) Sorry about not replying -- I usually do reply even to emails like that, but it's possible that I was overwhelmed with email at the time. - Higher prices mean less value for your users. Less value means less geek cred/love. I'd recommend Tarsnap to a fellow techie in a heartbeat. I probably wouldn't if it started at $100/mo. This is part of it -- Tarsnap wouldn't get nearly as much free advertising if its prices were higher. - What if he's doing this as a lead gen for his consulting services? No, I'm not doing that. In fact I do very little consulting these days.
atYevP 7y ago
Yev here -> yea, someone needs to send Patio11 this article, maybe I'll do it. I'd love to hear his take-aways. It's tricky, some of the folks internally were like "Oh man, response was so positive, we should have raised it by a lot more" and that's a tricky takeaway to refute - but it's important to remember (at least for me) that any deviation could have had dramatically different results, and because we've already done it - we can't test a first-time increase anymore!

mherdeg 7y ago

Yeah he had some thoughts on how tarsnap should price itself at https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/03/fantasy-tarsnap/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/03/fantasy-tarsnap/ which I think suggests that he would consider Backblaze underpriced.

csytan 7y ago
It's funny running into this article for the first time. I've been using Tarsnap for a couple years now for our SAAS. After receiving the first month's email receipt for $0.25, I replied: saying something along the lines of "damn this is cheap! you could charge a lot more!". No reply of course. He's probably heard it a million times already. Having gained a bit more experience with pricing our own product this past year, I think it might not be as simple as "he sucks at business". Here's some potential (and highly speculative) reasons: - He may not need the money. He's got a respectable day job that pays well. - Higher prices mean less value for your users. Less value means less geek cred/love. I'd recommend Tarsnap to a fellow techie in a heartbeat. I probably wouldn't if it started at $100/mo. - Higher prices mean you sell to a different audience with more responsibility. High touch sales, support email threads with 10+ folks all demanding different things, handling exotic types of billing, etc. Many devs don't like dealing with this kind of stuff. - What if he's doing this as a lead gen for his consulting services?
- cperciva 7y ago
  I replied: saying something along the lines of "damn this is cheap! you could charge a lot more!". No reply of course. He's probably heard it a million times already. I do hear that quite a bit, but I also hear a lot of people saying that Tarsnap is too expensive. I figure that as long as I have complaints coming from both directions I'm probably somewhere close to the right price. ;-) Sorry about not replying -- I usually do reply even to emails like that, but it's possible that I was overwhelmed with email at the time. - Higher prices mean less value for your users. Less value means less geek cred/love. I'd recommend Tarsnap to a fellow techie in a heartbeat. I probably wouldn't if it started at $100/mo. This is part of it -- Tarsnap wouldn't get nearly as much free advertising if its prices were higher. - What if he's doing this as a lead gen for his consulting services? No, I'm not doing that. In fact I do very little consulting these days.

atYevP 7y ago

Yev here -> yea, someone needs to send Patio11 this article, maybe I'll do it. I'd love to hear his take-aways. It's tricky, some of the folks internally were like "Oh man, response was so positive, we should have raised it by a lot more" and that's a tricky takeaway to refute - but it's important to remember (at least for me) that any deviation could have had dramatically different results, and because we've already done it - we can't test a first-time increase anymore!