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>if you're building a tool and you want your users to love you and to tell their friends ... >Don't upsell This is good advice for people for whom money is not

by nadam 5y ago

>if you're building a tool and you want your users to love you and to tell their friends ... >Don't upsell This is good advice for people for whom money is not a concern anymore, and their goal in life is to make random hipsters on the internet 'love them'. For the rest of us the goal is to make money with our work (and we get the love mostly from our family and friends.) What a one-sided article with so many upvotes...

zekenie 5y ago
Hi! It wasn't my intent to be one-sided, just to share my perspective, which I guess you could say is by definition "one sided" :) The creator of Excalidraw made a comment somewhere else on this page about how well Excalidraw+ is doing. > The plus plan has been very successful from my point of view, we’ve been able to bootstrap the business and make our first hire. The key realization is that while the unauthenticated open source model works really well for individuals, it’s hard for companies to adopt. > They want authentication, security policies, private spaces to collaborate, access control, search… all of this requires having a company behind it in practice and the open source model doesn’t work as well. > The two versions so far work really well alongside each other right now. I think there are certainly products out there that can't pull this off. And, that's a fair point.
yummypaint 5y ago
Users can tell when developers choose to accomodate themselves rather than improve UX. An upsell isn't just an upsell, it creates mistrust and triggers memories of the thousands of long-gone companies who milked their users for everything they could before abruptly dissappearing. The requirement that a piece of code make money is a major liability and automatically throws its future into question. It means the metric has changed from "does this solve the problem?" to "does this make enough money?" When desperate measures are being taken to monetize code, people sensibly run away. Users just want to use tools that work without getting jerked around.
- stnmtn 5y ago
  I don't understand how this comment is anything other than "beggars can't be choosers" You want free software, that never asks you for money, that stays updated?

by nadam 5y ago

zekenie 5y ago

Hi! It wasn't my intent to be one-sided, just to share my perspective, which I guess you could say is by definition "one sided" :) The creator of Excalidraw made a comment somewhere else on this page about how well Excalidraw+ is doing. > The plus plan has been very successful from my point of view, we’ve been able to bootstrap the business and make our first hire. The key realization is that while the unauthenticated open source model works really well for individuals, it’s hard for companies to adopt. > They want authentication, security policies, private spaces to collaborate, access control, search… all of this requires having a company behind it in practice and the open source model doesn’t work as well. > The two versions so far work really well alongside each other right now. I think there are certainly products out there that can't pull this off. And, that's a fair point.

yummypaint 5y ago

Users can tell when developers choose to accomodate themselves rather than improve UX. An upsell isn't just an upsell, it creates mistrust and triggers memories of the thousands of long-gone companies who milked their users for everything they could before abruptly dissappearing. The requirement that a piece of code make money is a major liability and automatically throws its future into question. It means the metric has changed from "does this solve the problem?" to "does this make enough money?" When desperate measures are being taken to monetize code, people sensibly run away. Users just want to use tools that work without getting jerked around.

stnmtn 5y ago
I don't understand how this comment is anything other than "beggars can't be choosers" You want free software, that never asks you for money, that stays updated?