$400/month is what PDFJS express is charging. $400/yr would have been a little difficult to swallow too, but this amount is just absurd for a product where most of the underlying technology is open-source.
406 karma · joined September 2, 2012
But to your points: because there is no good open source initiative that does what PDFJS Express does, commercial providers like PDFJS Express and PSPDFKit are able to build pricy SaaS offerings.
You charge the same amount to large commercial customers as you do to small startups, who are trying to save every penny. Even though I really value the technology you have built, you have not allowed us to "pay-as-we-go". I am not interested in your trial and the trials of your competitors because you don't allow me to start with a $5/month plan based on volume of usage. And so, we have resorted to writing the wrappers around PDFJS ourselves, slowly and steadily over months and years. Even though we might end up spending the same amount over 2 years by doing these things ourselves, at least we will understand the technology and own it perpetually.
Just charge us based on volume, so your revenue can align with our revenue. It will create much larger traction among small developers. If you are not targeting that audience, I understand, but I contend that most people on places like HN are that audience. Be more like Crocodoc (the company Box acquired). I really don't want us to keep reinventing the pieces here because this is not our core competency.
There are easy businesses, and there are hard businesses. Your business fell in the latter category, but your tactics to succeed were based on easier businesses. I still think you could have succeeded if you persisted and weren't so eager to get sales and play startup.
And give ICANN the biggest sign of how this should never happen again.
I think you can almost jump past the MVP stage for validation, this is a pure execution problem and you need to get money, make this your full-time job, and execute asap given your excitement on this problem!
I have learned a couple things about being the little guy trying to partner with bigger folks:
- Josh Elman (from Greylock) suggested that when (I think) when LinkedIn (or Twitter, I forget) was small, they didn't go out to look for partnerships with big companies, because they knew those wouldn't pan out because no one in a big company would care. They mostly sought relationships with smaller companies with some audience, but who were more receptive to talk to team up to crush the big guys and offer better value. Smaller competitors in crowded markets like banking are always trying to find ways to become more dominant, so they are more open than the folks at the top of the market.
- Just make your offering really really compelling - the "offer you cannot refuse" kind. This is not easy. This goes against traditional business sense, because you might have to offer value at less than cost. But if this is what the existence or growth of your business hinges on, you have to bend over backwards. Goes to the good old Dale Carnegie stuff; focus on their value in the conversation over yours. They need to feel like working with you is a steal of a deal. There are plenty of ways and business models to do this, but offering human capital, co-branding, offering equity or some rev share, customer insights, etc. are all fair game.
The answer might be yes for Dara, but it seems unintuitive to me.
I have for long appreciated the business value of design, but often struggle to understand why big companies tweak their brand in small iterations?