5 ms·

What is the monetisation options for IFTTT? They've now received $8.5M in funding, but charge nothing for the service, AFAIK? I'm interested to know how that i

What is the monetisation options for IFTTT? They've now received $8.5M in funding, but charge nothing for the service, AFAIK? I'm interested to know how that is going to make a return for the investors. (I love IFTTT, and think it is a great service - just interested to know/learn)

justhw 14y ago
Article states it will become a SasS. Perhaps charge $5 month and so on depending on how many updates/connections you make. It can also provide an all-in-one api for developers working with the products supported on IFTTT.
- TomAnthony 14y ago
  Interesting. $5 per month = $60 per year, so if they got 50,000 users it would still take almost 3 years to make the money back, excluding running costs. I'm often a bit surprised at how such companies can prove to be a good investment - I feel like there is something I'm missing in the numbers.
  - n9com 14y ago
    Because they don't need to be profitable - they'll probably end up getting acquired by a bigger company - thus is the world of VC...
  - kryptiskt 14y ago
    50,000 paying users sounds awfully unambitious for a VC-backed web startup. A projection of a modest Pinboard-like future like that can't possibly be what these firms are basing their investment decisions on. They probably think IFTTT have a shot at getting millions of users.
slykat 14y ago
They will probably charge for heavy usage and enterprise connections (Salesforce, Basecamp, etc.) similar to Zapier: https://zapier.com/app/signup https://zapier.com/app/signup
sologoub 14y ago
The integrator market is insanely large. There are very big name players that are effectively system integrators and charge huge sums of money to get different systems to talk to each other. Once they have the platform fully ironed out, the level of application for Enterprise clients is virtually limitless. For example, imagine if you could build a workflow by dragging and dropping to connect your Salesforce.com implementation with your back-office provisioning applications, based on a conditional logic and then send out SMS confirmation to the client, make a SFDC case note and update a bunch of statuses... all without writing a single line of code. Enterprises already pay for this through the nose. They will keep paying, because it's worth it. Enterprise customers also LOVE control. If they can have a business analyst do the work, instead of hiring an army of 3rd party integrators, they will over pay for it. If they can keep everything in-house at a reasonable cost, they will.
- josh2600 14y ago
  Enterprise usually means proprietary data structures. If IFTTT could go from SAP to ADP that would be worth a lot of money. Don't get me wrong, IFTTT can do a lot of cool stuff, but Enterprise is inherently difficult because of proprietary everything. Implementing a layer of abstraction means abstracting away this complexity through code to create a simple interface. IFTTT has a simple interface, but expanding into systems in the Enterprise won't be easy.
- pdog 14y ago
  "For example, imagine if you could build a workflow by dragging and dropping to connect your Salesforce.com implementation with your back-office provisioning applications, based on a conditional logic and then send out SMS confirmation to the client, make a SFDC case note and update a bunch of statuses... all without writing a single line of code." That third paragraph sounds like an important thing, but also sounds like a hellhole I'd never want to work at :)

justhw 14y ago

Article states it will become a SasS. Perhaps charge $5 month and so on depending on how many updates/connections you make. It can also provide an all-in-one api for developers working with the products supported on IFTTT.

TomAnthony 14y ago
Interesting. $5 per month = $60 per year, so if they got 50,000 users it would still take almost 3 years to make the money back, excluding running costs. I'm often a bit surprised at how such companies can prove to be a good investment - I feel like there is something I'm missing in the numbers.
- n9com 14y ago
  Because they don't need to be profitable - they'll probably end up getting acquired by a bigger company - thus is the world of VC...
- kryptiskt 14y ago
  50,000 paying users sounds awfully unambitious for a VC-backed web startup. A projection of a modest Pinboard-like future like that can't possibly be what these firms are basing their investment decisions on. They probably think IFTTT have a shot at getting millions of users.

slykat 14y ago

They will probably charge for heavy usage and enterprise connections (Salesforce, Basecamp, etc.) similar to Zapier: https://zapier.com/app/signup https://zapier.com/app/signup

sologoub 14y ago

The integrator market is insanely large. There are very big name players that are effectively system integrators and charge huge sums of money to get different systems to talk to each other. Once they have the platform fully ironed out, the level of application for Enterprise clients is virtually limitless. For example, imagine if you could build a workflow by dragging and dropping to connect your Salesforce.com implementation with your back-office provisioning applications, based on a conditional logic and then send out SMS confirmation to the client, make a SFDC case note and update a bunch of statuses... all without writing a single line of code. Enterprises already pay for this through the nose. They will keep paying, because it's worth it. Enterprise customers also LOVE control. If they can have a business analyst do the work, instead of hiring an army of 3rd party integrators, they will over pay for it. If they can keep everything in-house at a reasonable cost, they will.

josh2600 14y ago
Enterprise usually means proprietary data structures. If IFTTT could go from SAP to ADP that would be worth a lot of money. Don't get me wrong, IFTTT can do a lot of cool stuff, but Enterprise is inherently difficult because of proprietary everything. Implementing a layer of abstraction means abstracting away this complexity through code to create a simple interface. IFTTT has a simple interface, but expanding into systems in the Enterprise won't be easy.
pdog 14y ago
"For example, imagine if you could build a workflow by dragging and dropping to connect your Salesforce.com implementation with your back-office provisioning applications, based on a conditional logic and then send out SMS confirmation to the client, make a SFDC case note and update a bunch of statuses... all without writing a single line of code." That third paragraph sounds like an important thing, but also sounds like a hellhole I'd never want to work at :)