AnhTho_FR

This post totally resonates, but wondering where the initial expectation came from : GH stars -> revenue ?

Open source can be a part of a business model, but cannot be the only foundation of a business model. It would amount to say 'self-serve won't pay for your rent' if you assume 'self-serve' is just putting your product out there, without marketing, or growth loops.

Some new OSS companies nailed the business model Plausible: https://plausible.io/blog/open-source-saas (never raised funds) Posthog: https://posthog.com/blog/open-source-business-models

Awesome, can't wait to try it out at Lago. Congrats team!

Congrats on the launch!

Thanks!

Doc: https://doc.getlago.com/docs/guide/plans/subscription#subscr...

Github: https://github.com/getlago/lago

Links:

Doc on prepaid credits: https://doc.getlago.com/docs/guide/prepaid_credits#credit-pu...

Github: https://github.com/getlago/lago

Templates/explanation around how Notion uses prepaid credits for PLG: https://www.getlago.com/resources/templates/notion

Curious about which account you're mentioning?

Hi Devmor, I work at Lago. Happy to learn more and to support! My email: anhtho@getlago.com

Thanks! we're working on this, the point is: the problem occur for a small portion of visitors, and we're iterating to reproduce that. Thanks again for the feedback!

Hey Ark, I work at Lago, thanks for the detailed answer!

Hi neosat! I work at Lago and co-wrote the post, this was exactly our intention. Thanks for pointing that out :)

Interested in the answer too! Maybe you meant being a 'metering x billing layer' that can easily connect to any PSP, unlike 'Stripe Billing' that is only usable with 'Stripe Payments'?). In that case, we'd connect to 'Stripe Payments' (not Stripe Billing), which we already do :) Genuinely looking forward to your thoughts!

Hi! I work at Lago.

Billing is still a huge nightmare for engineers, this is what we're going after -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31424450

We've built and scaled it internally in a 5x Fintech Unicorn before joining YC, we would have loved to use an off the shelf solution, but none of them were a fit.

Hi! I work at Lago. As we wrote in the disclaimer of the article, we're just stating how our positioning is different, extract here:

"We were told recently: “We love your ‘Stripe hate’ content”. While it was intended as a compliment, ‘Stripe hate’ has never been our intention.

We partner with Stripe Payments and love their products. Our own product is an alternative to Stripe Billing (and Chargebee, Recurly, etc.) but with a deep focus on B2B and product-led companies. We actually have common investors on our cap table (e.g. Y Combinator and others)."

So much progress since the tamagotchi!!!

Yup it requires an unwavering belief, not just a 'spark of curiosity' x opportunistic, which was our case.

I agree with you around the analysis, but how do you explain the success of Ramp in the US then? Re India, will RazorPay win on the neobank side as well? As they have the critical size?

Can't share yet but enough to start a new product with an 8-people team!

Not sure what you mean by "professional" founders? VCs?

Appreciate the comment!

Exactly!

Does Airplane do Windmill, but closed source?

I doubt there's a formal answer to this, but to me it's like 'branding': won't give immediate results but compounds over time. And if you're a company who's never done branding, catching up after 3y is possible but super hard.

At the end of the day, I think it depends on the founders' sensibilities, because with no measurable ROI there are all the reasons in the world to deprioritize that!

Have you seen good resources / examples to build a 'mini design system'? Looks like most of the content about this is made for larger design teams (>20 designers)

Thanks Ian, I work at Lago. May I ask in which geography you are? We can't reproduce it on our end at the moment.

Stripe Billing is actually great at managing subscription billing, not so great at addressing consumption-based fees.

Also if you wanna use another payment processors than Stripe Payments (for cost reasons or because Stripe's product isn't the best for a specific geography and use case), you can't use Stripe Billing either.

There's a new wave of billing / RevOps tools coming in that focus on 'usage-based pricing', and the most common question is: 'isn't Stripe Billing doing that already'?

They do, but there are things we wished we knew earlier.

We've deep dived on an example (reproducing Stripe's very own pricing with Stripe billing).

Disclaimer: I'm building Lago, an open-source billing API for product-led SaaS. We're YC backed too and partner with 'Stripe Payments'.

Have you checked https://github.com/getlago/lago ? Open source billing API for SaaS.

Disclaimer: I am one of the cofounders, but looks like this could really fit your needs, especially as you add more complex logics afterwards: prepaid/offered credits, probably discounts, etc.

Also, if it’s the first time you’re building a billing system, you might want to check this thread about billing nightmares. It seems very simple at first but it becomes messy very fast. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31424450

Happy to help more (whether you use Lago or not!)!

Thank you so much! Happy to share!