Greg Isenberg is a multi-exit Silicon Valley entrepreneur and owner of Late Checkout product studio. He has:
- Headed Product Strategy at WeWork
- Been an advisor to Reddit
- Founded a startup, Islands, which was sold to WeWork
- Founded 5by, which was sold to StumbleUpon
Guest Author: Greg Isenberg
SaaS as we know it is dying and no-one is talking about it…
1 hour ago, Zapier ($5B company) started charging “pay-per-task” instead of only monthly subscriptions
When you can align customer incentives with your business model, it’s a beautiful thing
Bullish.
SaaS companies were able to get away with charging monthly for far too long.
Welcome to the pay-per-task software era.
Not surprised it’s the community-led companies that are moving to this model the quickest:
1. Understand community sentiment
2. Distill insights
3. Create products to delight
My guess is companies like Zapier started to hear more and more complaints of monthly subs.
We pay ~$40k/year for Figma. When I see the bill every month, it doesn’t feel great.
I wish it was pay-per-pixel, pay-per-project, one-time-purchase etc.
If you’re building a startup, it’s easy to copy the existing business model and apply it to your niche etc.
My advice:
Don’t. Experiment with new business models
If it strikes a chord, you’ll earn 100x more trust than you would by adopting the existing business model
My point: SaaS is evolving
New models are emerging and it’s about time.
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I’ll be writing more about this. Go to gregisenberg.com and quickly subscribe so you don’t miss it.
