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> If it is released as open source, how do you identify potential clients for your services? I think there's two parts to that. There's more traditional market

> If it is released as open source, how do you identify potential clients for your services? I think there's two parts to that. There's more traditional marketing, where you're offering a solution, which just happens to utilise your own open source product, and then there's engagement with existing users who have indicated, through support and discussion channels, that they're interested in the product but need something more. > Products released for free start several disadvantages - the user has low expectations for value To an extent, expectations can be managed. In my experience, a professional-looking web site with well-written tutorial and reference material can make a big difference to the initial impression. > support costs are unfunded, and the loose relationship between the developer and the user makes it difficult to have long insightful discussions about the user's needs. But is that not mitigated by the offer of paid support? Then support costs are funded, and there is a stricter relationship between vendor and customer. Is that much different to the relationship with a customer you've actually sold the product to? > The last question is, are you scratching your own itch as a developer with this project, or is it a startup idea? It started out as an itch while working for a previous employer, but it wasn't scratchable there. So now it's a startup idea. We know what product we want to build, we're just not sure what kind of company we want to build around it. As it's still in development, we don't have to make the decision yet, but it's something we need to think about along the way.

brudgers 14y ago
"there's engagement with existing users who have indicated, through support and discussion channels, that they're interested in the product but need something more." This heads toward what I was, perhaps inarticulately, getting at. In order for your product to gain traction, that strategy requires users to suffer up the learning curve without your help, or it requires you to offer free support to non-paying customers. It's a solid way to avoid getting to "No." I'm not convinced it's a solid conversion strategy and thus an efficient use of runway...at least in the free support scenario. On the other hand, a no-support strategy doesn't really sell what you want to be selling. To me, as essentially a B2B solution, it's gotta' either worth money out of the gate, or considered a non-starter. If users can muddle along with it for free, then the value proposition of $10,000 a year in services is a tough conversion, particularly if it is targeted at small shops. If it is targeted at large shops, then it needs to be priced at $10,000 a month just to fund the level of support required. To come back to my final question, are you going to use this PaaS to build the PaaS?
- danellis 14y ago
  > In order for your product to gain traction, that strategy requires users to suffer up the learning curve without your help, or it requires you to offer free support to non-paying customers. That wasn't how I was looking at it. I was thinking of it more as being a free product for those people who can comfortably use it without support, and essentially a paid product for people who need the support. Isn't that the usual "open source for enterprise" model -- for example, Red Hat? > To come back to my final question, are you going to use this PaaS to build the PaaS? I'm not sure how that question makes sense. It's a piece of software, not something we're deploying ourselves. If it was open source, it would probably be hosted (source, downloads, documentation and all) on GitHub. Of course we'll have 'dummy' apps we deploy with it for testing, but that's not the PaaS itself.
  - brudgers 14y ago
    1. My understanding is that Red Hat started out selling Red Hat Linux on disks - the internet in 1994 was not much of a distribution channel for large pieces of software. I would add that the attractiveness of a free OS can justify a larger expenditure on support than most tools - i.e. Red Hat solved a big problem for a lot of IT organizations with deep pockets. see: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/History_of_Red_Hat_Linux http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/History_of_Red_Hat_Linux

brudgers 14y ago

"there's engagement with existing users who have indicated, through support and discussion channels, that they're interested in the product but need something more." This heads toward what I was, perhaps inarticulately, getting at. In order for your product to gain traction, that strategy requires users to suffer up the learning curve without your help, or it requires you to offer free support to non-paying customers. It's a solid way to avoid getting to "No." I'm not convinced it's a solid conversion strategy and thus an efficient use of runway...at least in the free support scenario. On the other hand, a no-support strategy doesn't really sell what you want to be selling. To me, as essentially a B2B solution, it's gotta' either worth money out of the gate, or considered a non-starter. If users can muddle along with it for free, then the value proposition of $10,000 a year in services is a tough conversion, particularly if it is targeted at small shops. If it is targeted at large shops, then it needs to be priced at $10,000 a month just to fund the level of support required. To come back to my final question, are you going to use this PaaS to build the PaaS?

danellis 14y ago
> In order for your product to gain traction, that strategy requires users to suffer up the learning curve without your help, or it requires you to offer free support to non-paying customers. That wasn't how I was looking at it. I was thinking of it more as being a free product for those people who can comfortably use it without support, and essentially a paid product for people who need the support. Isn't that the usual "open source for enterprise" model -- for example, Red Hat? > To come back to my final question, are you going to use this PaaS to build the PaaS? I'm not sure how that question makes sense. It's a piece of software, not something we're deploying ourselves. If it was open source, it would probably be hosted (source, downloads, documentation and all) on GitHub. Of course we'll have 'dummy' apps we deploy with it for testing, but that's not the PaaS itself.
- brudgers 14y ago
  1. My understanding is that Red Hat started out selling Red Hat Linux on disks - the internet in 1994 was not much of a distribution channel for large pieces of software. I would add that the attractiveness of a free OS can justify a larger expenditure on support than most tools - i.e. Red Hat solved a big problem for a lot of IT organizations with deep pockets. see: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/History_of_Red_Hat_Linux http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/History_of_Red_Hat_Linux