> We are just three engineering students in an apartment living room, eating lentils everyday, and spending every waking moment of our lives trying to make Nototo into something that people love.
> Therefore, we really can't afford to spend time and figure out the best way to take money from you.
I really dislike this trend of "formulating a business plan for our business isn't important for us". It's supposed to come off as "we care so much about delivering a great product that we don't care about money" but once you remove the stigma about making money (you're a for profit business, you should be making money. It's a good thing. There's no shame in that) it just comes off lazy. Designing a pricing system and monetizing strategy is just as much a part of making a product as designing the frontend or the tech, and all that directly affects me as a user.
It doesn't really inspire me to try it if I have no idea if their pricing will be something I'm ok with or if their product won't exist because they didnt think coming up with a business plan was important.
I just wanna say that these are very valid points! It does make us seem less professional. And is potentially losing us some users.
We kind of scrambled that page together quickly because we wanted to get launch and get users as quickly as possible. Designing a pricing system may not take too long, but implementation would have delayed our launch date quite a bit and we really didn't want to delay the launch any further.
I think our lack of professionalism can also be an upside. It kind of allows me to create a personal relationship with some of our hardcore users and talk to them in order to guide the development direction of the app.
I disagree with the critique. Not all software or services need to be businesses - they don't present themselves as one. It's a student project fur fun and maybe recognition.
You could also argue in the other direction that they could release the source and let people self-host it.
For someone with the intention to make a profitable SaaS business (which, as you say, there's nothing at all wrong with) it'd be valid advise, but there are many models under which to release software and not having it figured out yet is totally fine too.
Student projects are great, but for me to invest my time and effort into using just about anything (especially something that is supposed to store my notes), I do need to see a stable long-term sustainable business.
Incidentally, that also excludes most VC-funded companies, because these are neither long-term nor sustainable and usually have a user-facing lifespan of 3-5 years.
It is that. It's free unless you find it so compelling you want to give the creators money you can. I'm sure the only thing stopping that from happening "back in your times" was that setting up a payment processor and accepting payments didn't take 15 mins. At no point do they say you can't use it if you don't pay
Mining notes for data is a terrible idea and a very quick way to guarantee that you never get any users.
Pricing in this regard is a signal for stability. If you’re paying for a service, it is far more likely to stick around. And the more stable the product, the more likely is a user to actually use the app — especially for a note taking app.
Agreed, especially with a note taking app. You want me to live in here? Ok, you better be around in 10 years. Charge me some money so that will be the case.
It's totally fine to dip feet in the water without commiting to anything.
Clearly this is all just validation of a product. Will people use our product if it's free? Will they use if there is a small price? A business plan is easy when theres demand for a product established.
> We are just three engineering students in an apartment living room, eating lentils everyday, and spending every waking moment of our lives trying to make Nototo into something that people love.
> Therefore, we really can't afford to spend time and figure out the best way to take money from you.
I really dislike this trend of "formulating a business plan for our business isn't important for us". It's supposed to come off as "we care so much about delivering a great product that we don't care about money" but once you remove the stigma about making money (you're a for profit business, you should be making money. It's a good thing. There's no shame in that) it just comes off lazy. Designing a pricing system and monetizing strategy is just as much a part of making a product as designing the frontend or the tech, and all that directly affects me as a user.
It doesn't really inspire me to try it if I have no idea if their pricing will be something I'm ok with or if their product won't exist because they didnt think coming up with a business plan was important.