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Comment by brycelarkin | Hacker News Reader

Looks cool! I use to work with some procurement groups. How is this different from the current rfp software out there rn (Scout, Ariba, Bonfire)? What makes it so that it’s for smb because I feel like theres a lot of similarity in the rfp process in enterprise and smb.

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Hi there - Bonfire founder here - this is firmly SMB which is a distinct category. Bonfire is gov focused, Scout was mid-market focused (trying to get into enterprise, and now owned by Workday), and obviously Coupa and Jaggaer are F500 focused (with Jagger also having a footprint in state gov / academia). Also note that Coupa/Jagger are really more of P2P platforms with some light sourcing and CLM in there. Bonfire and Scout are very Sourcing focused. There is MAJOR differences between these markets. None of Bonfire’s gov clients, for instance, would be a good fit for a sourcing platform meant for, say, small rubber manufacturers. Conversely, Bonfire probably isn’t a great fit for a logistics company that mostly procures transport services.

IMO there really is very little in the SMB space for Sourcing and CLM. Procurify is likely the closest but it’s more P2P focused (great company and team though).

Up until recently, I think most players in the space struggled to figure out SMB Sourcing or rather don’t think it’s a huge opportunity on its own. Smaller companies typically don’t do much sourcing volume, so providers that try to play in that space tend towards P2P. And the mid market is HUGE for sourcing.

Now it could be classic innovators dilemma, and these guys will figure it out and then move upmarket to mid-market. I hope they do! The world needs better buying tools, regardless of size.

A new flavour are the full-service procurement vendors out there. The idea being you basically outsource your procurement to them on specific categories (like IT, SaaS, etc). They offer some compelling value to SMBs.

Anyways, I wish these guys luck - it’s an exciting opportunity if they can crack the SMB nut.

Hi Corry, I’ve worked with Bonfire in the past. You guys have a great product and excellent customer service/success!

I don’t want to out my prior employer, but just wanted you to know we thought the pricing was very good. Maybe it’s different for other gov entities, but we were definitely open to paying more.

Thanks Bryce! Small world for sure. :) Appreciate the pricing comment. We subscribe a bit to the Amazon philosophy around value-generating: i.e. we want it to be no-brainer great value, and for every client that would be fine paying more, we have some who would struggle (given the fragmentation of gov agencies and their widely different priorities/budgets).

Definitely similar and that's part of the problem. Scout, Ariba, Bonfire, Coupa, Jaggaer, etc. prefer to stay upmarket. Longer sales cycles, onboarding processes, training sessions, and pricier annual agreements.

We're taking a simpler, more user-friendly SaaS approach so that similar tools/processes become more accessible to smaller companies that may not have dedicated procurement functions or the budget for one of the big guys.

Very cool, can you give details about the monthly costs?

Reluctant to give a quote without knowing whether there'd be any custom buildout, integrations, etc. If you're interested in learning more and talking pricing, feel free to shoot us a note at info@procoto.com. I'll personally respond and we can take it from there!

No problem, but this feels more like an enterprise process than a self serve SaaS solution. I'm not saying that is bad, but had the impression it is more self service such as I could select needed integrations and see pricing. I'd consider that more user friendly than contact sales.

You're right and we're in the midst of transitioning to a self-service approach from enterprise. Much more in line with what we're trying to accomplish.

Great. Take a hypothetical $20M annual revenue client (or opex, if easier), no build out; your bread and butter sweet spot client. What's their cost, or how do you think about it in concrete # / $s without any email or phone being involved?

That's a great question and one we're answering ourselves as we launch the self-service piece. The usability of the app is really similar to an Asana or Trello but still provides similar value to the base version of an enterprise procurement tool. So the goal is to find that sweet spot in the middle with pricing too.

Ok so specifically, using your range of "Asana to higher", the "business" tier of Asana [O] is $24.99 per user per month, and something like Vendr [1] (and I apologize if this is not the correct compqrison) is $78k / year for the middle tier. Let's assume 3 users for Asana, that's $900 per year vs ~85x that for the competitor. That's probably missing some nuance but there's a ton of vagueness / purposeful opacity in the response above, so that's range is a best guess of sorts which you can correct if you choose.

1. https://asana.com/pricing 2. https://www.vendr.com/pricing

Won't deny the intentional opacity. We haven't launched the self-service piece nor firmly defined its features. So definitely haven't solidified pricing yet.

That said, in the interest of giving you a real answer... The numbers we've thrown around for the base package are sub-$100/user/mo and the mid-tier sub-$500/user/mo. Tailored pricing for custom solutions.

Helpful thank you!!

Of course!

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