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FWIW, they explain exactly how they'll make money in the website (under Pricing) and in this thread.

masukomi 6y ago
we hope to get you dependent upon our product, and in the meantime come up with something we hope you'll be willing to pay for is not the most confidence inducing of business plans. Also, if the current plans are "free forever" have no caps on users or much of anything else and are good enough to use until they actually finish off the things worth paying for then how many folks are actually going to be inclined to pay for them? if it's NOT good enough as-is then why bother using it in the first place?
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  The business model isn't anything special... It's just freemium. Take a look at ProfitWell for instance, they do the same thing: Give away their core product then make money on upsells. Also, building the business model as they go is pretty normal for a startup.
  - mbreese 6y ago
    > building the business model as they go This just means that what used to be free will end up costing money when whatever new features they think they can charge for won't get enough users to cover their costs. This is especially true if the free plan is more than enough for most users. Which, if you're positioning yourself as a Jira alternative -- most users won't need in-depth AI planning for sprints. It's not a great business plan...
robertlagrant 6y ago
> FWIW, they explain exactly how they'll make money in the website (under Pricing) and in this thread. No, they explain how they currently hope to make money. That's a long way from being the same thing.
- newswasboring 6y ago
  This is such a nothing statement. How is that different from setting a price list on their website? They hope people will pay them doesn't mean they will
  - ivanbakel 6y ago
    Because the speculative version is much less trustworthy - and because this kind of service is prone to data lock-in, trust in pricing/profit-models is particularly important. Consider this: for an existing service with lots of data to back up its pricing, a price list can be treated as an effective guarantee of what the service will continue to cost into the long-term. The company knows that the pricing model is profitable - and therefore, raising prices won't be worth the massive customer outcry. For a new company, a price list is speculative. There is no way to do accurate long-term extrapolation of profitability. If the prices turn out to be too low to sustain the business, they will have to be raised - and while there will be an outcry, the business will simply have no alternative. And since it's really hard to migrate all your data/workflows/integrations/etc. away from the service you first decide on, you're incentivised to never join a new service - because the price instability might come back to bite you, let alone if the company itself doesn't collapse later.
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    > This is such a nothing statement Nope > How is that different from setting a price list on their website? They hope people will pay them doesn't mean they will Agree; I would make the same comment if someone claimed a price list meant a business was stable and worth relying on.

we hope to get you dependent upon our product, and in the meantime come up with something we hope you'll be willing to pay for is not the most confidence inducing of business plans. Also, if the current plans are "free forever" have no caps on users or much of anything else and are good enough to use until they actually finish off the things worth paying for then how many folks are actually going to be inclined to pay for them? if it's NOT good enough as-is then why bother using it in the first place?

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
The business model isn't anything special... It's just freemium. Take a look at ProfitWell for instance, they do the same thing: Give away their core product then make money on upsells. Also, building the business model as they go is pretty normal for a startup.
- mbreese 6y ago
  > building the business model as they go This just means that what used to be free will end up costing money when whatever new features they think they can charge for won't get enough users to cover their costs. This is especially true if the free plan is more than enough for most users. Which, if you're positioning yourself as a Jira alternative -- most users won't need in-depth AI planning for sprints. It's not a great business plan...

robertlagrant 6y ago

> FWIW, they explain exactly how they'll make money in the website (under Pricing) and in this thread. No, they explain how they currently hope to make money. That's a long way from being the same thing.

newswasboring 6y ago
This is such a nothing statement. How is that different from setting a price list on their website? They hope people will pay them doesn't mean they will
- ivanbakel 6y ago
  Because the speculative version is much less trustworthy - and because this kind of service is prone to data lock-in, trust in pricing/profit-models is particularly important. Consider this: for an existing service with lots of data to back up its pricing, a price list can be treated as an effective guarantee of what the service will continue to cost into the long-term. The company knows that the pricing model is profitable - and therefore, raising prices won't be worth the massive customer outcry. For a new company, a price list is speculative. There is no way to do accurate long-term extrapolation of profitability. If the prices turn out to be too low to sustain the business, they will have to be raised - and while there will be an outcry, the business will simply have no alternative. And since it's really hard to migrate all your data/workflows/integrations/etc. away from the service you first decide on, you're incentivised to never join a new service - because the price instability might come back to bite you, let alone if the company itself doesn't collapse later.
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  > This is such a nothing statement Nope > How is that different from setting a price list on their website? They hope people will pay them doesn't mean they will Agree; I would make the same comment if someone claimed a price list meant a business was stable and worth relying on.