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My main point is that this bottom up approach doesn't work as well as it could simply because of the difficulty of navigating purchasing processes. I know my te

My main point is that this bottom up approach doesn't work as well as it could simply because of the difficulty of navigating purchasing processes. I know my team would have bought easily 5x what we did if we didn't have to invest 4 to 6 months in getting a vendor set up for each SaaS we wanted. It just wasn't worth the hassle.

Jugurtha 6y ago
>My main point is that this bottom up approach doesn't work as well as it could simply because of the difficulty of navigating purchasing processes. I may have been unclear. The "bottom up" approach is precisely designed to circumvent and solve the case where the user is not necessarily the buyer. It emerged to solve the "shrink-wrap software", or when you did not have an army of salespeople. One way to look at it is "bringing SaaS to enterprise", which was typically the distribution model for consumer applications.
andrenotgiant 6y ago
Not to say this would have worked at your company, and not to say it's perfect, but I think the "HACK" of the bottom-up approach for software like JIRA or others is that it is priced in a way where you can get your team at a company using it and showing demonstrable value from using it on a free or very low-cost (AKA your personal credit card) tier. Then, when you go to make it official, you have much more power in the negotiation. If it's working well, making the "shadow IT" SaaS tool an official purchase typically goes: Team Lead: Everyone is using this tool, we're about to go above the free tier and need to purchase it. IT/Finance: You should have gone through the process, you need to fill out these forms. VP/CEO (to IT/Finance, seeing value of tool): Just get it done
- Jugurtha 6y ago
  Exactly. Then taking it a step further. GP at VC firm makes the round at their "portfolio" companies and see your product on every screen, or hearing about your product from every team they go to, and then wanting to speak with you because clearly someone is doing something right. Examples: YouTube, GitHub.
- alangibson 6y ago
  I think maybe I wasnt clear. No one tried to keep us from licensing anything. Pretty much any solution was fine with then assuming it wasn't a security nightmare. > Just get it done Getting it done is a process heavy, minimum 4 month process because of purchasing rules. That's the problem I'm calling out.
  - Jugurtha 6y ago
    >I think maybe I wasnt clear. No one tried to keep us from licensing anything. No need for someone to do that. The process and distribution method kept you from that.
  - andrenotgiant 6y ago
    Whether it's IT or Finance (purchasing rules), CEO/VP have the power to force them to make an exception or change their process if there's a clear business benefit.
    - alangibson 6y ago
      I'm talking about 10K+ global employee companies. No VP wants to listen to my problem licensing Jira. And prices changes like that happen on the scale of years.
solidasparagus 6y ago
I don't really agree. I've sold software both independently and by hooking into the AWS marketplace to reuse existing billing channels. It really didn't make anything better even though using AWS as a single point of purchase sounds like a good idea. The enterprise software purchasing process is just a slow one and the actual billing mechanics aren't really the issue in my experience. Plus delegating control of your payment relationship with your customers to a third party is more of a pain than a boon.
- coward8675309 6y ago
  My CFO didn't care about the line items inside our $20,000/mo Heroku bill. What he did care about its size. When I told him we could save a lot of money by fostering a direct relationship with companies like Redis Labs, he was very receptive to making that happen. My engineers could spend money on new pieces of third-party infrastructure pretty easily via Heroku plug-ins. If the spend got big we figured out how to address it. For this dynamic to work for you as SaaS developer, you need enough runway to wait for your users to adopt your tech and have some fraction organically grow big enough to be real money. This rhymes with how Intuit won the accounting market. They initially got destroyed in reviews when compared to their more mature yet complicated competition, but everyone starting a business wanted cheap and simple. You just need to be willing to wait for enough of your early garage-based startup customers to become S&P 500 companies. While you're waiting, you're also evolving your product so that it better meets your growing customers' needs.

Jugurtha 6y ago

>My main point is that this bottom up approach doesn't work as well as it could simply because of the difficulty of navigating purchasing processes. I may have been unclear. The "bottom up" approach is precisely designed to circumvent and solve the case where the user is not necessarily the buyer. It emerged to solve the "shrink-wrap software", or when you did not have an army of salespeople. One way to look at it is "bringing SaaS to enterprise", which was typically the distribution model for consumer applications.

andrenotgiant 6y ago

Not to say this would have worked at your company, and not to say it's perfect, but I think the "HACK" of the bottom-up approach for software like JIRA or others is that it is priced in a way where you can get your team at a company using it and showing demonstrable value from using it on a free or very low-cost (AKA your personal credit card) tier. Then, when you go to make it official, you have much more power in the negotiation. If it's working well, making the "shadow IT" SaaS tool an official purchase typically goes: Team Lead: Everyone is using this tool, we're about to go above the free tier and need to purchase it. IT/Finance: You should have gone through the process, you need to fill out these forms. VP/CEO (to IT/Finance, seeing value of tool): Just get it done

Jugurtha 6y ago
Exactly. Then taking it a step further. GP at VC firm makes the round at their "portfolio" companies and see your product on every screen, or hearing about your product from every team they go to, and then wanting to speak with you because clearly someone is doing something right. Examples: YouTube, GitHub.
alangibson 6y ago
I think maybe I wasnt clear. No one tried to keep us from licensing anything. Pretty much any solution was fine with then assuming it wasn't a security nightmare. > Just get it done Getting it done is a process heavy, minimum 4 month process because of purchasing rules. That's the problem I'm calling out.
- Jugurtha 6y ago
  >I think maybe I wasnt clear. No one tried to keep us from licensing anything. No need for someone to do that. The process and distribution method kept you from that.
- andrenotgiant 6y ago
  Whether it's IT or Finance (purchasing rules), CEO/VP have the power to force them to make an exception or change their process if there's a clear business benefit.
  - alangibson 6y ago
    I'm talking about 10K+ global employee companies. No VP wants to listen to my problem licensing Jira. And prices changes like that happen on the scale of years.

solidasparagus 6y ago

I don't really agree. I've sold software both independently and by hooking into the AWS marketplace to reuse existing billing channels. It really didn't make anything better even though using AWS as a single point of purchase sounds like a good idea. The enterprise software purchasing process is just a slow one and the actual billing mechanics aren't really the issue in my experience. Plus delegating control of your payment relationship with your customers to a third party is more of a pain than a boon.

coward8675309 6y ago
My CFO didn't care about the line items inside our $20,000/mo Heroku bill. What he did care about its size. When I told him we could save a lot of money by fostering a direct relationship with companies like Redis Labs, he was very receptive to making that happen. My engineers could spend money on new pieces of third-party infrastructure pretty easily via Heroku plug-ins. If the spend got big we figured out how to address it. For this dynamic to work for you as SaaS developer, you need enough runway to wait for your users to adopt your tech and have some fraction organically grow big enough to be real money. This rhymes with how Intuit won the accounting market. They initially got destroyed in reviews when compared to their more mature yet complicated competition, but everyone starting a business wanted cheap and simple. You just need to be willing to wait for enough of your early garage-based startup customers to become S&P 500 companies. While you're waiting, you're also evolving your product so that it better meets your growing customers' needs.