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Ask your customers. Propose your current amount and be honest "do you think this is fair?" If they say yes great! If not, ask what they think is reasonable. Set

Ask your customers. Propose your current amount and be honest "do you think this is fair?" If they say yes great! If not, ask what they think is reasonable. Set yourself a lower limit to keep it profitable for yourself. "Sorry I can't price it below X". See how they respond.

punkpeye 4y ago
I am trying to figure out how to scale this to the point where unit economics makes the most sense. If I simply transferred current costs on to the end user, it would be too much. It would be USD 0.20 x number of tests x number of hours, e.g. a company that works 9 to 5 and has 100 tests, that is 0.201008=USD 160 per day. However, changes the more clients you have. If I have 10 clients paying for 100 concurrent test capacity, I wouldn't need 1000 VMs, as they are unlikely to be all running tests at the same time, all the time.
- bequanna 4y ago
  Why are you assuming that you will need to maintain a static infrastructure? Aren’t you able to (fairy quickly) autoscale up/down based on the size of some queue of test requests?
  - punkpeye 4y ago
    Pooling is not an easy problem. As I have only two clients at the moment who are helping to test this, keeping a hot pool allows me to focus on other feature development while sacrificing some of the costs. Keeping a hot pool makes it a lot easier to immediately start test runs. Run tests, restart browser, clear sessions, return to the pool.
    - bequanna 4y ago
      Right, at your current stage there is pry no need to build some task queue. However, if you anticipate infrastructure costs to grow quickly I think you’ll want to invest some effort in this. You could even have tiered services. For example, some users may be willing to pay more for more consecutive tests.
- Forge36 4y ago
  Go with actual costs today. Don't run at a loss "because maybe someday I'll be profitable". What are you charging today? Charge fairly. If you get more customers and improve efficiency again, be honest, "thanks to some improvements in scalability I'm able to reduce your costs to X". You'll also build a long-term relationship by being fair and taking advantage of your customers.
  - punkpeye 4y ago
    Good advice
bequanna 4y ago
This is great advice for a startup trying to figure out pricing!

punkpeye 4y ago

I am trying to figure out how to scale this to the point where unit economics makes the most sense. If I simply transferred current costs on to the end user, it would be too much. It would be USD 0.20 x number of tests x number of hours, e.g. a company that works 9 to 5 and has 100 tests, that is 0.201008=USD 160 per day. However, changes the more clients you have. If I have 10 clients paying for 100 concurrent test capacity, I wouldn't need 1000 VMs, as they are unlikely to be all running tests at the same time, all the time.

bequanna 4y ago
Why are you assuming that you will need to maintain a static infrastructure? Aren’t you able to (fairy quickly) autoscale up/down based on the size of some queue of test requests?
- punkpeye 4y ago
  Pooling is not an easy problem. As I have only two clients at the moment who are helping to test this, keeping a hot pool allows me to focus on other feature development while sacrificing some of the costs. Keeping a hot pool makes it a lot easier to immediately start test runs. Run tests, restart browser, clear sessions, return to the pool.
  - bequanna 4y ago
    Right, at your current stage there is pry no need to build some task queue. However, if you anticipate infrastructure costs to grow quickly I think you’ll want to invest some effort in this. You could even have tiered services. For example, some users may be willing to pay more for more consecutive tests.
Forge36 4y ago
Go with actual costs today. Don't run at a loss "because maybe someday I'll be profitable". What are you charging today? Charge fairly. If you get more customers and improve efficiency again, be honest, "thanks to some improvements in scalability I'm able to reduce your costs to X". You'll also build a long-term relationship by being fair and taking advantage of your customers.
- punkpeye 4y ago
  Good advice

bequanna 4y ago

This is great advice for a startup trying to figure out pricing!