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>Anyone who won’t give you a credit card for the free trial isn’t likely to give you a credit card later to become a customer This is extremely weird. It's a B

by xxs 5y ago

>Anyone who won’t give you a credit card for the free trial isn’t likely to give you a credit card later to become a customer This is extremely weird. It's a B2B - I won't ever use my own credit card just to try some service, heck - I won't provide my credit card to an unknown entity that may lack PIC compliance, either. Asking for the company/budget/contract review/etc. for trial, etc. is a massive hassle as well. >doing whatever AWS does to gate accounts” is perfectly reasonable. Not really, Amazon is beyond well known and massive, and it has all the policies in place. This a small unknown startup.

sokoloff 5y ago
Yes, but the people who don’t trust them with their CC are much more difficult (non-)customers to reach. Filtering the set of prospects to the easiest ones to convert, providing that set is still large, seems like a good 80/20 use of a startup’s limited time. If you were a really hot prospect, super-interested in using elest.io for a big project but didn’t want to give a CC because <reasons>, I’m sure you’d find a way to contact them by email and try to work something out. And they’d find a way to vet you or just turn on a free account for you.* The casual “no way I’m giving my CC” people aren’t high-likelihood future paying customers. Gate with a CC, make sure there’s a way to send an email/free text form and move on with building the company. * “no way I’m sending an email either for a free trial just because I won’t give a CC.” “OK, you’re not a prospective customer. It’s a numbers game.”
teknopaul 5y ago
I would even prefer a cheap first payment on a credit card or paypal than to give my credit card details to a company that claims not to want to use it. That just looks suspicious to me. I refuse to give my credit card details to google because I suspect I know what they will use it for, tracking, sneakily taking payments by dark patterns in apps or if my phone gets stolen.

by xxs 5y ago

sokoloff 5y ago

Yes, but the people who don’t trust them with their CC are much more difficult (non-)customers to reach. Filtering the set of prospects to the easiest ones to convert, providing that set is still large, seems like a good 80/20 use of a startup’s limited time. If you were a really hot prospect, super-interested in using elest.io for a big project but didn’t want to give a CC because <reasons>, I’m sure you’d find a way to contact them by email and try to work something out. And they’d find a way to vet you or just turn on a free account for you.* The casual “no way I’m giving my CC” people aren’t high-likelihood future paying customers. Gate with a CC, make sure there’s a way to send an email/free text form and move on with building the company. * “no way I’m sending an email either for a free trial just because I won’t give a CC.” “OK, you’re not a prospective customer. It’s a numbers game.”

teknopaul 5y ago

I would even prefer a cheap first payment on a credit card or paypal than to give my credit card details to a company that claims not to want to use it. That just looks suspicious to me. I refuse to give my credit card details to google because I suspect I know what they will use it for, tracking, sneakily taking payments by dark patterns in apps or if my phone gets stolen.