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> Everyone seems to be either single Pro user, or Enterprise. Do they really think there is nothing in-between? Just like GitLab. If you have users that might

> Everyone seems to be either single Pro user, or Enterprise. Do they really think there is nothing in-between? Just like GitLab. If you have users that might post one or two issues a year you have to pay for them at dev level prices. $240 / year for idle users that barely participate? No thanks. And they have the same tone deaf solution; upgrade to Ultimate. Silicon Valley SaaS bros have lost touch with reality because they have unlimited money to work with.

ShakataGaNai 6y ago
Ah $240/year, I wish it were that cheap. If you want the security goodies is $1200/year/user. You have to make the impossible choice of getting everyone involved with the tool, or getting all the features. Because you can't afford the features AND the users.
Swizec 6y ago
> Silicon Valley SaaS bros have lost touch with reality because they have unlimited money to work with. Disagree. The issue is that they don’t want cheap users. It lowers your average user value, impacts your valuation, and usually cheap users are the most demanding to support in relation to their revenue. A user that pays $50/year and has 5 questions to support us very different than 5 questions from a user posting $5000/year
- Aeolun 6y ago
  The problem is getting those 5000/month accounts if nobody wants to use your product before they get there.
  - Swizec 6y ago
    You’d be surprised. Those users come from sales more than self serve. Very different business model.
    - alisonkisk 6y ago
      Who is going to buy your high touch sales offer if they see no one uses your product? Is this a thing where all the YC companies buy each other's stuff to prop up the revenue numbers until IPO?
      - Swizec 6y ago
        Have you tried buying from salesforce? Very high touch, very expensive, very unfit for small businesses, hugely successful and widely used. Different audiences, different approaches. Many successful businesses are such that none of us have ever heard of, but are making millions, sometimes billions. We haven’t heard of them because we’re not the target market and talking to us is a waste of resources.
- donmcronald 6y ago
  I see the support excuse all the time, but I don't understand why it needs to be that way and I don't really believe it to be honest. Sell me a small business version that includes per-incident support. If someone has a problem and balks at the idea of paying fair value for the support they need, then I agree they're not worth having as a customer. If the goal is to ignore or be actively hostile towards the bottom 80%, I guess a lot of SaaS companies are succeeding. To me though, they're building poorer quality products that aren't going to capture enough up and coming businesses and the long term impact is going to be a bunch of bloated garbage with a ton of half baked features where everyone is competing for the "enterprise" dollars. > It lowers your average user value, impacts your valuation To me, that's what it's really about. It's pump and dump quality SaaS that's built for an IPO, not for the users.
  - Swizec 6y ago
    > If the goal is to ignore or be actively hostile towards the bottom 80%, I guess a lot of SaaS companies are succeeding. Yes, that is the goal. When an org decides to target primarily enterprise, the whole business model changes. You go from self serve to sales, from support chat to SLAs, etc. You literally become unable to support small customers cost effectively and they are not worth your time. Happens a lot in the B2B SaaS space when companies realize how much easier it is to have 10 users for $10,000 than 1000 users for $10. Some companies decide to keep focusing on small businesses and indies, which is great. Ultimately there’s room for both business models in the world. But as a business, you have to make sure you work with businesses where you are [still] the target market.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Significantly damages your brand to do this and you'll defacto turn into a consulting company. Plus places incentives on your org to force things to be incidents since that's what pays. You'll get stuck in a local minimum of being a small-time consulting company. Or maybe you won't. But that's the reason I wouldn't want to do it. Besides, there's no way you can only access the no-support users. Google, for instance, offers one of these for their email product and are able to make the product free. In their case, they got brand awareness quite fast. But even though Google has Google One in the US if you want paid response, this forum frequently decries the lack of support. The problem is the users who occupy the no-support space cannot be selected as consumers. When you try to do that, you will get an army of users who want to not pay but who do want support. They think they want no-support but they don't, and they will retroactively rebrand their reasons to be more than money. That isn't bitterness or anything (I've always dealt with B2B software) but it's the reality of the thing as I can see.
- jwitchel 6y ago
  That's not quite right. It's not the support. It's the churn metrics. A guy who uses your system episodically can give the appearance of a high churn rate. This is very bad and if you're raising money can imply that your system isn't sticky which lowers your valuations. If you're in the fundraising game that's actually worse than a few extra dollars of revenue.
  - social_quotient 6y ago
    Goodhart's law - When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
    - ta988 6y ago
      We need another law here... When everybody maintains bad measures despite knowing they don't work. Impact factors in science are another example of that. You can say it is broken and proove it, your jury for grants or positions will still ask you to put the numbers next to your papers, and if you don't they'll do it themselves...
- cmeacham98 6y ago
  Sell me a no or very limited support plan then (or charge extra for the support when it's needed). At least personally, if your docs are halfway decent and I don't run into any major bugs I will almost never make a support request.
hanniabu 6y ago
> Just like GitLab. If you have users that might post one or two issues a year you have to pay for them at dev level prices. $240 / year for idle users that barely participate? No thanks. Google Form linked in your readme, done deal.

ShakataGaNai 6y ago

Ah $240/year, I wish it were that cheap. If you want the security goodies is $1200/year/user. You have to make the impossible choice of getting everyone involved with the tool, or getting all the features. Because you can't afford the features AND the users.

Swizec 6y ago

> Silicon Valley SaaS bros have lost touch with reality because they have unlimited money to work with. Disagree. The issue is that they don’t want cheap users. It lowers your average user value, impacts your valuation, and usually cheap users are the most demanding to support in relation to their revenue. A user that pays $50/year and has 5 questions to support us very different than 5 questions from a user posting $5000/year

Aeolun 6y ago
The problem is getting those 5000/month accounts if nobody wants to use your product before they get there.
- Swizec 6y ago
  You’d be surprised. Those users come from sales more than self serve. Very different business model.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    Who is going to buy your high touch sales offer if they see no one uses your product? Is this a thing where all the YC companies buy each other's stuff to prop up the revenue numbers until IPO?
    - Swizec 6y ago
      Have you tried buying from salesforce? Very high touch, very expensive, very unfit for small businesses, hugely successful and widely used. Different audiences, different approaches. Many successful businesses are such that none of us have ever heard of, but are making millions, sometimes billions. We haven’t heard of them because we’re not the target market and talking to us is a waste of resources.
donmcronald 6y ago
I see the support excuse all the time, but I don't understand why it needs to be that way and I don't really believe it to be honest. Sell me a small business version that includes per-incident support. If someone has a problem and balks at the idea of paying fair value for the support they need, then I agree they're not worth having as a customer. If the goal is to ignore or be actively hostile towards the bottom 80%, I guess a lot of SaaS companies are succeeding. To me though, they're building poorer quality products that aren't going to capture enough up and coming businesses and the long term impact is going to be a bunch of bloated garbage with a ton of half baked features where everyone is competing for the "enterprise" dollars. > It lowers your average user value, impacts your valuation To me, that's what it's really about. It's pump and dump quality SaaS that's built for an IPO, not for the users.
- Swizec 6y ago
  > If the goal is to ignore or be actively hostile towards the bottom 80%, I guess a lot of SaaS companies are succeeding. Yes, that is the goal. When an org decides to target primarily enterprise, the whole business model changes. You go from self serve to sales, from support chat to SLAs, etc. You literally become unable to support small customers cost effectively and they are not worth your time. Happens a lot in the B2B SaaS space when companies realize how much easier it is to have 10 users for $10,000 than 1000 users for $10. Some companies decide to keep focusing on small businesses and indies, which is great. Ultimately there’s room for both business models in the world. But as a business, you have to make sure you work with businesses where you are [still] the target market.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Significantly damages your brand to do this and you'll defacto turn into a consulting company. Plus places incentives on your org to force things to be incidents since that's what pays. You'll get stuck in a local minimum of being a small-time consulting company. Or maybe you won't. But that's the reason I wouldn't want to do it. Besides, there's no way you can only access the no-support users. Google, for instance, offers one of these for their email product and are able to make the product free. In their case, they got brand awareness quite fast. But even though Google has Google One in the US if you want paid response, this forum frequently decries the lack of support. The problem is the users who occupy the no-support space cannot be selected as consumers. When you try to do that, you will get an army of users who want to not pay but who do want support. They think they want no-support but they don't, and they will retroactively rebrand their reasons to be more than money. That isn't bitterness or anything (I've always dealt with B2B software) but it's the reality of the thing as I can see.
jwitchel 6y ago
That's not quite right. It's not the support. It's the churn metrics. A guy who uses your system episodically can give the appearance of a high churn rate. This is very bad and if you're raising money can imply that your system isn't sticky which lowers your valuations. If you're in the fundraising game that's actually worse than a few extra dollars of revenue.
- social_quotient 6y ago
  Goodhart's law - When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
  - ta988 6y ago
    We need another law here... When everybody maintains bad measures despite knowing they don't work. Impact factors in science are another example of that. You can say it is broken and proove it, your jury for grants or positions will still ask you to put the numbers next to your papers, and if you don't they'll do it themselves...
cmeacham98 6y ago
Sell me a no or very limited support plan then (or charge extra for the support when it's needed). At least personally, if your docs are halfway decent and I don't run into any major bugs I will almost never make a support request.

hanniabu 6y ago

> Just like GitLab. If you have users that might post one or two issues a year you have to pay for them at dev level prices. $240 / year for idle users that barely participate? No thanks. Google Form linked in your readme, done deal.