There's probably more people who see a successful product in a space (thus social proofing the brand) and want to pay to use it than those who will actually pull their finger out and build a competitor.
"There's probably more people who see a successful product in a space (thus social proofing the brand) and want to pay to use it than those who will actually pull their finger out and build a competitor."
Of course there are, in fact I drove a few customers to them based on this post! Never heard of the service before and it looks interesting in the right setting.
However, it only takes 1 or 2 determined competitive efforts to start taxing your saas business even in small ways that only make life harder. Is showing your hand worth the trade-offs? That's up to each individual to answer. I know entrepreneurs / developers sitting on both sides of this table - doing the copying and being copied. Way of the road.
> I know entrepreneurs / developers sitting on both sides of this table - doing the copying and being copied.
Exactly - if there's a successful business format, it wont stay a niche product without copycats forever. It's unlikely that showing your revenues will have any greater impact than being a number one featured product through any other route.
You can be copied if you stay silent and just do direct sales as well - if you're a company reliant on broad reach of a semi-technical, small-business (/revenue aspirational) audience, it seems like it's worth the risk.
My take on this is if the market is big, it's not going to matter anyways since large markets will naturally attract competitors based on the amount of people screaming for solutions. If it's a niche however, you're probably best keeping to yourself about it.
One caveat is if your target market is entrepreneurs then being open about it might help differentiate yourself from competitors.
Totally. And depends on what the upside of signaling is? Some entrepreneurs like to drop their numbers so that they can generate competitive inbound finance or acquisition interest without having to shop round. It also attracts talent. Transparency can be an incredible powerful competitive advantage too.