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The people at Bitwarden and their supporters need to answer 1 simple question. How do they increase their valuation 10+x without pulling those tricks. Because
by asdajksah2123 4y ago
The people at Bitwarden and their supporters need to answer 1 simple question.
How do they increase their valuation 10+x without pulling those tricks.
Because that's what the VC funding demands. No VC is giving out $100mm for a 20% or even 100% return, which could possibly be achieved by simple growth. They're giving that money because they're expecting exponential return.
Maybe there is an enterprise play somewhere here which justifies this, while maintaining the core product in its current form. I guess we will see, but I'm not holding my breath.
- michaelmior 4y ago> Maybe there is an enterprise play somewhere The post mentions the plan to implement advanced business features, and also "Business users deserve consumer ease-of-use along with advanced integration and deployment features."
- bombcar 4y agoThis is the only way it works out, and even those are susceptible to falling years later (Google's "free domain email for life" as an example). The way it works is if the free/small customer cost to maintain is just absolutely minuscule compared to the total costs/revenue.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoI mean in theory it doesn't have to. Someone can run a business privately and run it the way they want and enjoy it. Make great profits, but probably not become a billionaire. VC vultures however will not allow that and they have their own pump and dump agenda.
- klooney 4y agoAny company that promises a service for life is just lying- cost/benefit five years on will always fail, and new managers won't feel bound by the promise
- bachmeier 4y agoThat just makes it worse. I'm a paying customer right now. VC + focus on business means the consumer stuff dies or gets neglected to the point that it should die. All resources get moved to the high-growth parts of the business once VC enters a company. Bitwarden will not be the first to get VC to change its operating principles.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoYeah I think it means "we're going enterprise, at-home users enjoy your coming time with bitwarden as it may end abruptly" . That's a bit superlative, but I suspect people should be looking for alternatives. Anything has to be better than my old way of adding my own password layer on top of an excel spreadsheet that I came up with while in college a long time ago. Bitwarden syncing was pretty nice and it not trying to turn into some kind of swiss army knife app.
- kornhole 4y agoOne benefit of providing a great free service to individuals is that they become champions and help sell the product. Case in point, I work in IT at a large company that currently does not have an official password manager, and I am recommending it here.
- behnamoh 4y agoHere we go again: Some company (in this case, Bitwarden) "betrayed" its customers by doing what every other firm does. And Hn goes brrr over it. Then another alternative (KeePass) appears on HN's frontpage. It's like companies are right: You can't target the niche market of programmers because their expectations are through the roof. I wonder, aren't the majority of HNers working at a for-profit company funded by VCs? The hypocrisy is just intolerable at this point.
- bachmeier 4y agoI usually just ignore comments like this, but I'm honestly curious. What part of my comment are you replying to?
- insane_dreamer 4y ago"advanced business features" can also translate as "we don't know how we're going to monetize this but we'll hopefully figure out how to make companies pay for the service"
- michaelmior 4y agoI think that's a pretty disingenuous translation. The post describes some ideas and I'd imagine that the VCs who invested were provided with a more detailed planned.
- unethical_ban 4y agoDoubling money isn't good enough? Is the business plan that risky?