Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cj 1100 days ago
We just bought a tool at work from a startup for $400/month that helps designers store components and helps developers catalog React code for said components.

Edit: Another idea is some sort of Slack app that costs $1/month/person. Then try to sell it to companies that have a couple hundred employees. The $1/person/month means the value you're providing need only be incremental rather than life changing.

1 comments

>> app that costs $1/month/person. Then try to sell it to companies that have a couple hundred employees

I would not recommend doing this. Any company with several hundred employees is into contract & procurement management territory, and likely to have a staff lawyer, privacy & protection person and person/team dedicated to (slowly) evaluating purchase & adoption of Saas products. This, plus all the people involved in any sort of roll-out across the entire company (of anything) will destroy the economics of a few hundred per month deal. You probably need a VP to approve this not because of the cost but the impact, and as a manager an incremental value deal that I see every month will be the first thing I cut, not because it's expensive but because it's an easy one.

Every low-cost per <whatever> deal I've seen in an enterprise of this size has a sizeable upfront cost and then a a tiered or unlimited per seat component that's correlated but not necessarily directly tied to a variable component. This reflects the sales process that involves more effort upfront. For a pure, low-cost per user/month model you need a completely self-serve adoption path.

Agreed, the $1/seat/month is a tough business to be in. For engineers alone this might be a difficult business to build.