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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

The product changed, the widget didn't.

In other words, because TACODA was selling services, by changing accounting practices their customers saw a radically different product - one which made the person recommending it to their boss look clever.

The pivot more fully leveraged TACODA's expertise. Because their they understood the how and why and when of the data's value so much better than their customers, the fraction of their monetization sent to their customers was more money than their customers were ever likely to extract.

"How can I send someone a check?" is a counter-intuitive business model for most people. Even though it is used all the time.

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Yes. We worked very hard for years to build, sell and service "tools to help web publishers sell more ads for more money." Once we pivoted, we realized that all publishers really wanted was "more money."

>> "How can I send someone a check?" is a counter-intuitive business model for most people

Great Point. This was the sole reason for Groupon's success even though were a lot of coupon companies before. Imagine what would have happened if Groupon charged small business to distribute their coupons instead of paying them?

The customers didn't see a different product. They completely changed the product.

I doubt you change from publisher saas model to be an ad network just changing your Billing contracts (like the little anecdote makes you believe), now they have to go after they agency and sell to them, and manage impression mismatch claims and what-not

In service industry terms, they went from self-service to full service. When the service provided is for business and revenue generating, just sending a check is as full service as it gets.

Their model reminds me of payroll services like ADP which are ridiculously cheap. They make their money on short term float and the larger the payroll they handle, the more money they make.

One might say it more closely played to the greed of their "consumers" (publishers in the article), letting them use the company's product without any real risk or even competence.

Instead of taking money from their customers, they gave money to their customers.

Now if I could only make Lamborghini do the same ...

One might say that, but I wouldn't agree. :)

They didn't so much target greed as they did reduce the initial investment risk.

Getting Lamborghini to take your money is trivial. Monetizing that taking is the hard part.

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