happyfeet

Merry Christmas to all. :)

Absolutely. Most often I catch myself do private browsing in Chrome and 'feel' safer with Firefox. May be my fears are unfounded and yet I do it often.

Excellent points. Interesting to note that most startup businesses that go through traditional investor route exit via acquisitions or getting acquired to get returns for investors (or IPO).

I had this conversation with an angel investor with our team, when we said we are interested in staying in business for a long time and build our user base & let them speak for us. The investor said you need to take a call whether you want a 'lifestyle' business or you want to take the other route to build scale fast. Haven't heard from him yet. :) We were not convinced that we should throw lot of advertisement money, get lot of eyeballs, convert 1 or 2% into sales & just grow.

So, the question is: what kind of commitment can we give to our customers to assure them that a B2B business here is to stay & serve them. The purpose is to "exist" not to get acquired.

Would love to hear examples & stories of businesses that have managed to do the balancing act.

Thanks. Yes, that was a very interesting passage in the book.

When asked to write about something the tendency is to think: "oh, everything about that topic has already been written." Or "There is nothing original or new to write about".

Instead focussing on the smallest of objects & start with it, brings along a flood of original thoughts to write about.

Very interesting perspective indeed.

One gives constructive feedback only if they really care and do not mind spending some time explaining why you think there are flaws that need to be corrected.

Several of the managers in companies have the habit of saying "well done" to top performers with top rating during performance review & have nothing constructive to say. Does that mean they have nothing to improve in current position & they should just vacate the place so their direct report can take his/her place?

As Mark says in the article, it is the difficult path. To take a stance, have a point of view & explain why it is so. The easier option is to say "great work" & just run away. I am learning this more often in areas that are new to me - say in appreciating designs & colors that I am not so good at in web design & so on.

That would be like hiring designers based on whether they know photoshop or coreldraw.

Powerful words. Just the brutal truth in those phrases. Thanks for sharing. I should watch that movie.

As most people say, you can launch a half-feature not a half-assed one. If you think you have the minimum features necessary to make your app 'useful' for your initial customers you should just launch.

I do not see a blog link on your webpage. If not, start doing it soon. Start talking about your app, use cases, problems and how you are solving them. Anything that you think is relevant for your broader audience.

And iterate based on feedback from your initial customer base. Don't worry right now about scaling. If you have that many hits on your app that is a good problem to have. The worst is indifference.

Good luck with you app and I am sure you'll do well.

Good point. My thought is that, the $5 budget apps are actually paid for by the person using it whereas the big budget items (say $2000 software) are paid for (or negotiated) by the indirect purchasing departments. The end users don't actually pay it themselves which could also be part of the psychology as to why they aren't so 'demanding' so to say.

You are right. This is true for businesses with substantial number of customers.

It is a significant difference for those starting up with small customer base (10 or 20) to pay from $23 earlier to $53.

It is surprising to see this coming from Spreedly, especially in the context of their previous discussion on the same topic in HN (when Chargify increased price).

When you price a subscription product, one should factor in long term sustainability at that price, for a long time.

Any price increase due to additional features / facilities you provide - say 24*7 on-call support, must not be burdened on your existing users.

Provide a way for existing users to "opt" for those at a higher price, but leave them at the current price as they stand.