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Ask HN: Charge at launch, or wait a few months to learn about our users?

7 points by jjallen ↗ HN
At the launch of our project in a couple of months, should we charge from the get go, probably limiting the size of the community, or launch totally free to learn about our users and how much they use the site?

21 comments

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alexgaribay
You could launch it as "beta" to see what the initial users like/dislike. Ask what features they like or want or are willing to pay for. Improve your project based off user feedback. Charge when beta closes but provide some sort of timeboxed trial.
27182818284
Charge before launch. Our first check was before the product was built. I don't think there is better validation that that. :)
pc86
I’ve always been interested in this. Are you using the term “check” literally? Did you actually get someone else’s money in your bank account before writing any code? It seems like a very Kickstarter-esque way to build a product (I mean that in the best way possible).
27182818284
Before writing any code, technically not. Before product was alpha? Yes.

PS: I wanted to followup to this, because I should mention that I was just as much a skeptic as you about this. I thought it would be impossible to get a check up front, despite people recommending it as a way to bootstrap the business. Well, it totally works. Just make the customer happy, grab a check upfront and have a contract.

pc86
I too have read a lot about people doing this, but nothing specifying how exactly they executed it. Does your contract specify production features, a timeline, or both (or neither)?

I’d love to read a blog post about your experience with this and how you executed it, how the pre-alpha revenue compares to beta or production, etc.

jmathai
This. Colin from one of my favorite startups, CustomerIO, called me on the phone and pitched their product. Once he know I was interested he got my credit card number. All before the product was even launched (I think).
gregcohn
it depends precisely what your goals are, but assuming you want to get some traction and data, i strongly encourage you to launch free. we would have if we could have afforded to (as we have hard costs associated with our product). once we were able to convert to a free model, our usage went up on the order of 20X.
jjallen
We can afford to launch free, so I think we will. The launch feature will be one of many to come later that will be much more valuable, so yeah, I think we'll launch free.
AhtiK
Even after launch the struggle remains to balance between exposure and financial gain -- should you offer a free trial or a free tier?

From the question I'd presume the product will be paid in the end and not supported by ads and external revenue stream. Given this I don't think one can test the market-product fit without actually charging money.

There are exceptions, think big social launches that turn into businesses (like Ghost blogging). For me this always seems rather hard to pull off. Like expecting that at launch day there will be 10k signups.

See this for one take: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ab-test...

To answer your question, it highly depends on the nature of your product, business model, competition and financial backing. So I do not have an answer, more like a ramble to help clean up your head.

One thing to warn, at least in my experience it is very hard to turn free users into paying one (conversion-wise) (free tier case). Free tier user and paying user have very different characteristics. Yet a lot of successful SaaS companies do have free tier. At the same time there are successful known companies who have removed a free tier (and/or doubled-tripled pricing without any public post to notify new users). I'd guess existing users at least kept the pricing.

jjallen
Was considering having a free tier that is supported by user-generated content and possibly advertising. There will definitely be a paid tier though.
AznHisoka
Make it free, but don't have release 1 powerful feature. Have users email you for more info for access to that feature, and start having conversations on how much they'd pay for it.
chiph
How much do you already know about your users? Because this is a pretty fundamental thing to know, before you start writing code. Check out "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank (who sometimes visits here)

http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-Blank-ebook/...

jjallen
Thanks for this: I found this free link with the book though: http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/upl.... Hopefully it's the same or as good version.

I'm actually building this for myself initially. I currently work in the industry and realized that there are a lot of tools and ways to consume information about the industry faster and easier that don't exist, so I actually know quite a bit about my users. I'm doing some additional user research as we work on development to make sure my working habits aren't totally out of the ordinary and to estimate the number of items the freemium version will have available, assuming we have a freemium option.

jjallen
I actually asked the question Sunday night here if I should build for myself only, and assume other users want exactly what I want or do more user research to make sure what I want is what others want as well. I'm trying to build it where no one should have any huge gripes with it.
chiph
Build it for the people who need it and have money to spend. :)
chc
It depends on what your goals are, but if the most important thing for you to know is whether your product is valuable to people, asking for money is the only real way to determine that.
sogen
The Minecraft way: charge right from the start, even from early beta. That sounds more profitable (and safer).
jjallen
Part of me wants to charge right away, so I won't be funding everything myself from the start, but I don't want to limit the long-term size of the company because of short-term thinking...
anthony_franco
Charge. Otherwise you're optimizing your product to satisfy free users, which isn't always what free users would want.
jjallen
We'll be launching with one of the many features that I eventually want to build, so I'm reluctant to charge from the start.