A flip on the incentive might be that their core product uses open-source software somewhere in it and the style of open-source license may compel them legally to release any modifications, additions, etc. I don't know which licenses that may or may not apply to and IANAL.
Also for reference, RedHat's entire business model was like this, mostly charging for enterprise support. I use past tense because I have no idea what they do today. Way back in the day that mean when you submitted a support ticket, you might get a developer that worked on the product to help you if it was beyond their initial support triage level.
More sales and trust. Vendors who open source are offering their customers the right to repair and self-host their products should they go belly up. That itself is a selling point.
They can't compete with the closed-source ones. Open source is a very efficient user acquisition strategy. Not as much to turn users into paying customers tho. But it is a way to go from 0 to 1 in a market that otherwise would be very difficult to call attention.
I'm Daniel Ch: /r/SaaS moderator[1], founder, etc. I'm launching to HN this podcast, "Talk To Your Users": https://anchor.fm/talktoyourusers
I've previously tested an idea on Twitter [2] (in typical 'talk to your users' validation fashion) and on subreddits [3]: live examples of 'Talk to your users'
The feedback seemed interesting, so... I am now launching it!
What's the idea? - I record (with consent) conversations with users. People that are/will/were users of my product. Why?
Situation: One of the top advice bits in the startup/product world is: talk to your users. PG said it multiple times, but double-stressed it by saying: Half the advice I give to startups is some form of "talk to your customers." And then there's The Mom Test: a book about how 'learning if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you'.
Problem: Ok, any practical examples? I mean me listening to founder X talk to user Y. With good and bad examples
My solution: I'm doing this: recording my conversations with users.
What product will I talk about? - The answer is: I don't fully know. I'm as of now building PriceUnlock.com, a tool that helps SaaS founders find&set the perfect pricing for their tool. But maybe due to the conversations, we'll see a pivot. Or two. Or maybe it'll all go well and I'll just 'talk to my users' about future features. Who knows where this takes us? But I'm launching today with 6 episodes.
As the moderator of /r/SaaS, what can I do to make this rank higher in the list? It seems like the subreddits are not ordered by # of subscribers all the time
Am a bit wary that the community might be against "info-products", but after the somewhat positive reception of my post the other day (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27087688), I thought this might inspire others to:
* Validate at a fast pace
* Trade overthinking for getting something out
* Share their story/ies
It'll probably make some of you wince, the fact that the info product I've validated is "My first 1,000 Twitter followers", but in all honesty, I'm doing by best to be transparent about it: I plan to share what I wish I've heard before starting.
Nothing that complicated. And it's not because I haven't explored that option
If anybody reading this is able to create something that can reach 99%+ accuracy in terms of authenticating items, I've (obvious in the post) got the distribution and the audience to sell this to — DMs always open if you've got something solid
Currently it's a fully manual process.
We have competitors claiming they're 'using AI' but it's a bullshit gimmick for the masses of users. Unless an 'AI' is having 99%+ accuracy, it's probably too risky to implement
I'm glad too and grateful for the second chance on the article!
> I just have a difficult time seeing how it could be cost-effective, without being eye-wateringly expensive.
We write the guides first, which 'earns' us the 'audacity' to claim we know how to authenticate. I thought of the academic world so as to prove the expertise (I'm the complete opposite of an academic)
But mostly B2C, so it's a consumer-focuseed service
> But I guess if it's really just sending links to Amazon listings
The products we're authenticating are mostly 'asset products', so items that are $300+, most of the time sold-out, have some resale value over retail OR retain more of their retail value than usual items (think: Chanel items)
There is a great deal of information already available in their main lines of business with items of high volume, popularity, and resell value. A great example of all three would be the original set of collaborative releases between Nike and Off-White, called "The Ten." Many people have bought authentic pairs, and many, quite a few knowingly, have bought fakes. There is a large pool of information on the variability of both authentic and fake items. Often, experts can determine which sellers have factory sources in common, because the factories frequently do not sell directly to consumers.
People who know where this information exists, since it is frequently in a few different places, could read as much as possible and compile it into guides. My guess is that's what they have done, since it can be difficult to be an expert on everything. The bulk of their business probably also has to do with a small subset of the full market. I doubt they see many requests to authenticate, say, a pair of Carol Christian Poell drip sneakers, because they are low in volume and overall popularity. And sometimes the best source of information is rep makers and resellers, especially with pieces that are difficult to duplicate.
Fakes can be convincing, but they're frequently sorted into a couple tiers, and in some cases, fakes can only be spotted with a detailed examination of areas where the fakes are most likely to deviate from the originals. There is a fuzzy threshold for quality that is determined by the ability to identify these differences while someone is wearing the fake item.
