News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by anakic on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @04:55PM (#11584469)
Thanks! Something like a site wide license? Any suggestions on a price point for this? I'm decent at development, but I'm a complete noob at marketing and business.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by dataminded on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @10:47PM (#11586284)
I'm a marketer :-) Also, I have purchased a non-trivial amount of BI, Analytics, and Marketing software at total contract values as high as $X00K.

I suggest that you offer at least two tiers (personal/education and corporate). You can keep the personal tier low to drive adoption as part of your growth strategy and price your corporate license at $200-$600 per person per year. I have never been in a situation where there was even a need to discuss the cost of a tool at those price points. If it will increase productivity, just buy it.

Lastly, consider an enterprise or site option for users with more than X licenses.

Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by voltagex_ on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @11:44PM (#11586444)
>price your corporate license at $200-$600 per person per year. I have never been in a situation where there was even a need to discuss the cost of a tool at those price points

Come work for government, then despair.

Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by amaterasu on Thursday April 28, 2016 @03:44AM (#11587106)
I used to work for a Japanese multinational making networking gear. Excel was part of the mandated SOE, and was used for everything (even unit testing frameworks in VBscript), so this would be a no brainer for their environment. The engineers would have difficulty getting this purchase through as it is too cheap for the enterprise version... In the accountant brain, cheap == a toy for a number of companies.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by patates on Thursday April 28, 2016 @04:40AM (#11587296)
I think the logic is like "they can't possibly support this product at this price point, we would rather depend on something which may be inferior but well-supported".
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by tixocloud on Thursday April 28, 2016 @11:45AM (#11589704)
Support is such a crucial point in enterprise software. The reason why they pay big bucks is they have someone to call when something goes wrong
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by PeCaN on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @05:09PM (#11584586)
Site-wide or per-seat, I'm not really sure which would be better. For the companies I work with, which are by-and-large pretty small, I think a per-seat license would be better (several of them only have 2-3 production analysts). You could do ~$600/head including support+updates for a year (might want to cap hours of support, however) pretty easily I think.

I'm not any better at marketing, I just know a lot of people that would use this if it were pitched at them correctly. Unfortunately, most of sales involving enterprisey companies is in the pitch and not actually in the product....

Alternatively you could just get bought by Microsoft like that other guy mentioned.

Best of luck!

Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by anakic on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @07:25PM (#11585441)
Thanks! I haven't given too much thought to support, but it seems to be a recurring theme here. It's definitely something to think about.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by blangblang on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @06:25PM (#11585095)
Also consider a license like JetBrains old "personal purchase for professional use". I've carried Resharper around with me from employer to employer as my own "hammer" resulting in multiple new enterprise licenses when other people see me use it. I imagine this is exactly that kind of software. Scratching an itch the business doesn't yet realize is there.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by ctiothy on Thursday April 28, 2016 @12:00PM (#11589824)
I would also like this option. With JetBrains, as long as you yourself are paying for the license you can use the IDE at work. Your employer cannot reimburse you in any way for the license or else you have to get the full on commercial version.

This is something I'd like to be able to purchase to toy around with at work, but not necessarily something I would want to try to get my employer to buy for me, especially so I could move around with it (and use it for personal projects as well).

Maybe something cost-wise between the personal and commercial licenses?

Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by shocks on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @05:35PM (#11584761)
Just a thought, you may want to think about changing the name if you're going after enterprise. Feels a bit amateurish/not serious.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by anakic on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @05:39PM (#11584797)
Absolutely true. Having trouble coming up with a name. Open to ideas. Currently I'm thinking "Tabularity", I've bought the domain. Not 100% set on it, but I'm definitely set on changing the name.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by pash on Thursday April 28, 2016 @12:06AM (#11586509)
SQExcel? The domain sqexcel.com is available.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by NKCSS on Thursday April 28, 2016 @05:11AM (#11587396)
I'd advise against using the term 'excel' in the product, unless you use it as 'blah for Excel'.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by utexaspunk on Thursday April 28, 2016 @09:36AM (#11588675)
eQuery? xlsql? I dunno, but I agree that the name makes it a little bit harder to take seriously.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by coverband on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @09:30PM (#11586005)
I doubt the name itself matters much as long as the product/site/marketing/branding/support docs/etc. look professional enough. In fact, this name is pretty unique and would probably show up as the only result when searching from Google.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by wyldfire on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @05:39PM (#11584796)
That's what I thought at first too, but I suspect it's too late and most companies won't care much. Key is to have an enterprise edition with a support agreement and a higher price (as identified elsewhere in this thread).
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by jcrawfordor on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @06:11PM (#11585001)
Ever since I saw an invoice for Good for Enterprise (office nickname: Good for Nothing) I've realized enterprise buyers aren't too worried about name.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by sremani on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @06:25PM (#11585094)
The name is playful and plays on collective conscious of "thingamabob". I think the name is clever and succinct.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by anakic on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @06:52PM (#11585251)
Nice to hear definitely. That's the vibe I was going for, but it feels a bit clumsy. Maybe I should have use QueryThingie instead:)
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by biot on Thursday April 28, 2016 @06:12AM (#11587642)
QueryWidget?
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by wyldfire on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @05:29PM (#11584717)
Yes, good idea. Put "call" in for the price for now and be prepared to negotiate. All the big companies think they're special and will want a "great deal." You can give all of them a great deal and at the same time find out what the market is willing to pay while not underselling.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by anakic on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @05:37PM (#11584779)
Good point. I added that in the FAQ section in the Guide, but really it should also be on the pricing page. I'll add it.
Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by iheartmemcache on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @06:35PM (#11585161)
I've been around the block in corporate. Here's a guidebook (sorry I can't spend more than 15 minutes on this)

1: Get insurance for your product. It will run really cheap for something low-risk like this. (Our firm pays less than 10 grand a year for General Liability, All-risk, and Professional Liability up to 10MM, which is more than good enough for nearly every company out there.)

2: Like Patrick said, the second you throw "HIPAA" compliance up there you have the ability to charge 10 (IME, more realistically, 25x -- but your expenditures increase as a result of that (incurred labor costs of additional support, etc)). At your 20 dollar price-point, you're undervaluing yourself by literally 3 or 4 orders of magnitude. Find an industry (say, that dude who mentioned oil, find out what regulatory institutions dominate), get vendor certified and insured and you're looking at Oracle-esque money + 30% maintenance fees per year + support fees + modification fees.

Corporate sales is all about the steak and strippers (and nepotism) but it's wildly lucrative, even now when oil is trading at like 40/bbl due to SA flooding the hell out of the market. To put it in perspective, Parker hydraulic gear commands a 3 or 4x premium over other brands of nearly-comparable quality. It's a lot like medicine or finance, huge markups but huge barriers to entry re: regulatory certs/risks. I wouldn't sell a site license for the product itself (per actual site, not per corporation, that midtown Manhattan office is billed separately from the LA office) for less than low 6 figures. (Sales cycles are long and expensive, your net on that will probably be 30%, which is why Oracle is always pushing for you to go buy that RAC license, it's only 30% more!)

3: Along the veins of having industry compliance, obviously, offer support. Lets say you want to target the mid-market, Bob the engineer won't be able to do buy the software until his manager sees a support contract available. You're basically not going to maximize revenue targetting this demographic. Supports a must though. (Joel Spolsky factioned software sales off into the "under 1k, petty cash" and "above 100k, gotta take it to the board". Supports a must for either one, at 400 a seat or 400/k/year/seat) I'd target niche oil + board approval market with a relatively long sales cycle (especially if that other HN'er who mentioned oil can get you in for a round of golf with the CIO and give him the 30% rip or whatever's standard now in enterprise sales).

4: Just a note, I take things apart for fun and your product isn't well protected. I'm sure you know that since you left little fun notes around your code base (ps. I do snoop around, and I like you also! haha).

Just another why targeting the "Oracle" demographic (where they literally give copies away with no license keys or anything to everyone on their website), and corporations comply with the fee policies because it's wiser to pay the fees now than have the BSA audit come in and have a 5x fine imposed.

---

I made a really long post about here[1] re: medical hardware (another tightly regulated industry with high margins and a sales team that makes or breaks) -- the relevant information is in the last few paragraphs.

There are also .NET licensing components if you make the (imo unwise) decision of targeting the mid-market, which uses USB keys + a network server to limit your trial functionality, but as I'm sure you know, the second those bits hit the hard-disk, someone like me is going to take Olly to it and have it smashed into pieces within a few hours to a few days. Those keys just keep the honest honest (i.e. a company might forget that their trial ran out, or the note to authorize the purchase didn't make it down to their AR/AP dept, etc).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11543670

Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by anakic on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @07:16PM (#11585397)
Haha, glad I didn't write that class for nothing:)

Anyway... wow that's some comment! It's a lot of info to unpack! Would love to be able to hit you up with a question or two later if possible, but this gives me a sh*tload of stuff to research, you have my thanks!

Re:ThingieQuery: $19 SQL IDE for Excel by iheartmemcache on Thursday April 28, 2016 @09:23AM (#11588580)
Contact information is in my profile, I'd be happy to help if I can, though 90% of it's going to be just rubbing elbows with the right people and hiring out the proper staff. (Though one can do fairly well organically guest posting on relevant blogs - i.e., if I were targeting the financial industry I'd post about how my software helps with risk analysis, if I were targeting primary lenders, I'd blog about how much easier it is to keep a real-time view of your cash-flow/accounts, etc). Not sure how much I can help specifically, but my contact information is in my profile if you'd like strategic advise which is fairly cross industry.