We once shipped a tiny change to our billing page at 1 a.m. and woke up to angry emails. The new plan names looked pretty in our UI, but they did not match the plan identifiers in Stripe. Cards were charged, receipts failed, and support lit up. Fifteen minutes of…
Category: Business of Software
The business side of software. Pricing, monetization, SaaS models, and building sustainable software businesses.
The business of software: Building and Selling Software in the Modern Era
Software as a Business Part 1: Lessons from the Trenches. A hands on take on building and selling software, written from the keyboard of someone who ships, answers support at midnight, and stares at Stripe charts with coffee in hand. These are timeless lessons you can put to work right…
The business of software: Make Something People Pay For and Keep Them Around
Software as a business is not a deck or a dream board. It is a bunch of messy pull requests, support tickets at odd hours, and a balance between product gut and numbers that refuse to be ignored. Right now the conversation in dev land is heated about React licensing,…
The business of software: Revenue Follows Working Software That Solves Real Pain
I once pitched a whole room of suits with a demo that ran on my laptop and a coffee shop wifi. The deal was big for us, the kind that would fund payroll and a new espresso machine. We won the pilot. Day one their team tried a weird data…
The business of software: Activation Retention and Getting Paid
A quick chat in the hallway Founder: We shipped the app. People like it. Why is revenue flat? Me: Because likes do not pay the AWS bill. Signups are not the same thing as customers. How many hit a first win in the first session? Founder: We were on the…
The business of software: Charge Unless You Have a Clear Reason Not To
Software as a Business Part 11: Lessons from the Trenches — a practitioner’s take with timeless lessons. Dialogue-style intro Founder: Our beta list is growing. Do we go free, freemium, or paid from day one? Me: Charge unless you have a clear reason not to. Free is a strategy, not…
The business of software: Treat Your Product Like a Business From Day One
Software eats your calendar before it eats the world. The product takes shape, users show up, and then the real job begins. Not shipping the app. Turning it into a software business that pays rent, salaries, and the cloud bill without turning your hair gray. After a few launches that…
The business of software: Price Like You Mean It
Everyone is talking about subscriptions. Twitter is warming up for an IPO, Adobe pushed everyone to Creative Cloud, and iOS got a full repaint. Feeds are full of new apps and new SaaS dashboards. The loud part is launches. The quiet part is making rent. This is about that quiet…
The business of software: Raise the Bar or Get Buried
Context Apple pushed iOS 7 yesterday and every app on my phone looks like it went on a juice cleanse. Flat colors, cleaner lines, and a loud message to every product team out there. Raise the bar or get buried by the next update. Twitter just said they filed for…
The business of software: Software Is Code But Business Is Promises Kept
Software as a Business sounds slick until your phone buzzes at 3 in the morning because your billing job tripped on a customer with a funny character in their company name. That was my Tuesday. Coffee in hand, log window wide open, I watched a queue of failed charges like…