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I think that decision is a very personal one, and only you can make it. With that being said, here are a few points that should (perhaps) inform your decision:

I think that decision is a very personal one, and only you can make it. With that being said, here are a few points that should (perhaps) inform your decision: 1. How much institutional support (and energy) is there to get the paid version shipped? Is everyone else burnt out and jumping ship, or could you realistically stay the course and get that product out the door? 2. Even if you shipped the paid version, would the revenue be enough to cover the burn rate? It looks like you guys raised 3 million over the course of the past year, and burned through it (correct me if I have that wrong, just getting the data from your Angellist page). At that burn rate, your premium version (at your stated price of $5 per user per month) would need to onboard roughly 50,000 paid users to be at the break-even point (though probably more than that since your costs would go up). Is onboarding than many users feasible? If you can ship the premium version and onboard a ton of users all before the rest of the team throws up their hands...maybe you should go for it; give it one last college try.

Crystalin 12y ago
Thank you for your analysis and advice. Reaching the required number of paying customers is not possible at the moment, that's why the CEO is looking for other investments. The marketing we did was too small to reach that number and we are probably bad marketers anyway. We were expecting for a buzz that would make us famous and then become superstars. And that's why we tried to make a better slack with our chat. But I don't see that point coming. And I think it is the reason we are falling
- brudgers 12y ago
  I don't see a clear market segmentation. Is it for 10 users or 10,000? Five bucks per person-month doesn't make sense in either market. It's $5 too much for people building their business on Drive and Evernote. It's too little for 10,000 screen organizations...they know you will go broke. And then there's an asterisk on the free plan and another deal for students, so I'm left wondering if it's worth figuring out the value proposition before I think about learning how to use it. If it was an enterprise product, it might make sense but that's not live fast. die young, and leave a good looking corpse business strategy compatible. Students probably don't need mobile task updates for group projects. In the middle, though, there are good user stories and price points. $400 per month for up to 20 users...that sounds like a way to qualify businesses and reduce the number of sales. And if you can't make the bottom line $5000 per year better for 2000 companies, then it's time to throw in the towel. Good luck.
  - Crystalin 12y ago
    Thanks. We never took the time to evaluate more our pricing and its impact. We were focused on getting users so we can make them pay later
    - brudgers 12y ago
      Your company is building a business solution, not Pintrest. People are going to live 8 and ten hour workdays in it. Sure there needs to be an "easy button" to help people get onboard. Maybe that is training. Qualifying customers by their willingness to invest in learning to use your product makes sense. Project management is hard enough that investments in tool acquisition pay off. The wrong customers are worse than no customers because they look like success but arent.
      - Crystalin 12y ago
        You are right and we didn't see it. We probably had wrong customers. Identifying the good ones is however a hard process, specially for the service we provide.

Crystalin 12y ago

Thank you for your analysis and advice. Reaching the required number of paying customers is not possible at the moment, that's why the CEO is looking for other investments. The marketing we did was too small to reach that number and we are probably bad marketers anyway. We were expecting for a buzz that would make us famous and then become superstars. And that's why we tried to make a better slack with our chat. But I don't see that point coming. And I think it is the reason we are falling

brudgers 12y ago
I don't see a clear market segmentation. Is it for 10 users or 10,000? Five bucks per person-month doesn't make sense in either market. It's $5 too much for people building their business on Drive and Evernote. It's too little for 10,000 screen organizations...they know you will go broke. And then there's an asterisk on the free plan and another deal for students, so I'm left wondering if it's worth figuring out the value proposition before I think about learning how to use it. If it was an enterprise product, it might make sense but that's not live fast. die young, and leave a good looking corpse business strategy compatible. Students probably don't need mobile task updates for group projects. In the middle, though, there are good user stories and price points. $400 per month for up to 20 users...that sounds like a way to qualify businesses and reduce the number of sales. And if you can't make the bottom line $5000 per year better for 2000 companies, then it's time to throw in the towel. Good luck.
- Crystalin 12y ago
  Thanks. We never took the time to evaluate more our pricing and its impact. We were focused on getting users so we can make them pay later
  - brudgers 12y ago
    Your company is building a business solution, not Pintrest. People are going to live 8 and ten hour workdays in it. Sure there needs to be an "easy button" to help people get onboard. Maybe that is training. Qualifying customers by their willingness to invest in learning to use your product makes sense. Project management is hard enough that investments in tool acquisition pay off. The wrong customers are worse than no customers because they look like success but arent.
    - Crystalin 12y ago
      You are right and we didn't see it. We probably had wrong customers. Identifying the good ones is however a hard process, specially for the service we provide.