A word of warning on selling features, perhaps customers don't value those features as much as the seller does? My history is that I built a real-time analytic

A word of warning on selling features, perhaps customers don't value those features as much as the seller does? My history is that I built a real-time analytic engine for reporting project/program progress within large multi-nationals. We had this idea of a maturity scale to guide a client along a path and to show how our features differentiated us from competitors: Level 1) A client is recording progress against key milestones Level 2) A client is trending data against those key milestones and comparing against past data Level 3) A client is using drill-downs to understand how to affect the trends and deliver milestones sooner against specific metrics from L2 Level 4) A client is defining and reporting exceptions (+/- %/n from expected) Level 5) A client is defining and using event-driven reports from those exceptions All clients were at L2 within days of being set up on the system. Few clients ever reached L3, and none ever reached L4 or L5. The problem was, our price tag was derived from the cost of storing, reporting on, and executing workflow around L4 and L5... we were expensive. This was fine from the perspective of the sales process because everyone wants to reach L5 and so buys into it. But in reality it turned out that once clients had mastered L2, the incremental value received from the weight of extra process required to make L3+ valueable to them just never added up. We sold ourselves as the only company offering L5 reporting, and whilst clients were aspirational they only ever had the need for L2 or L3 reporting. We were giving them L2 reporting for the price of an L5 system. Reading the comments here, and I personally have not used Mixpanel for a while now, I suspect that you guys are on the same path we were: Selling the complexity and the capability of a Formula 1 car, when most people just want a Volvo. It's not even the first time I've seen this cycle repeat itself. Even when I think of companies like Vignette (15 years ago) I recall they sold caching + personalisation, the price tag being determined by the personalisation but it turned out almost every client only needed the caching. I can't think of many clients who stayed with them after that epiphany had been had. Good enough is frequently good enough. Which reminds me of this: http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-0... "When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine" - and if the orgs do not have data scientists to make sense of the advanced reports you're offering, then those orgs may likely choose to go for something cheaper and simpler that is giving them high returns at the level they're operating at.