Pricing
Pricing strategies, free tiers, monetization, and packaging for DevTools.
43:02Episode 148
Sam Lambert, CEO of PlanetScale: dropping the free tier was a great decision
Sam Lambert is the CEO of PlanetScale - a cloud database provider.
Sam shares:
- Why dropping the free tier was one of PlanetScale's best decisions. But is not for every startup.
- People solving serious problems appreciate serious content and if you can create meaningful content, that's a big advantage.
- CEOs should be transparent and collaborative but assertive. Don't let your company die while enacting someone else's decision
- Express hard-to-convey-benefits via your customers’ experiences
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Sam's Twitter
- Sam's LinkedIn
- PlanetScale
- PlanetScale Postgres
- Caching blog post
- Ted Nyman
- Snowflake
- Vitess
Sam shares:
- Why dropping the free tier was one of PlanetScale's best decisions. But is not for every startup.
- People solving serious problems appreciate serious content and if you can create meaningful content, that's a big advantage.
- CEOs should be transparent and collaborative but assertive. Don't let your company die while enacting someone else's decision
- Express hard-to-convey-benefits via your customers’ experiences
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Sam's Twitter
- Sam's LinkedIn
- PlanetScale
- PlanetScale Postgres
- Caching blog post
- Ted Nyman
- Snowflake
- Vitess
47:07Episode 126
Nikita Shamgunov - founder of Neon: storytelling, pricing and hiring execs
Nikita Shamgunov is the founder of Neon, an open-source serverless Postgres company. Before Neon, Nikita co-founded MemSQL, now SingleStore, which is valued at over a billion dollars. He has also worked as a VC at Khosla Ventures and held engineering roles at Meta and Microsoft. Nikita is known for his strategic thinking and transparency about his decision-making process.
We discuss:
- The importance of storytelling and providing a clear narrative for your company
- When to introduce a sales team and how to build a sales and marketing "machine"
- Pricing strategies, including pricing for storage and compute in the data and analytics space
- The evolution of revenue models in DevTools: from selling seats and storage/compute to selling tokens
- Lessons learned from hiring MongoDB’s VP of Engineering, focusing on improving reliability and building strong team management processes
- The benefits of using a high-quality recruiting firm and avoiding the pitfalls of bad hires
- Balancing competitiveness with respect for competitors to maintain credibility, particularly in the developer tools market
- The idea of “developing your taste” in product development, inspired by Guillermo Rauch from Vercel
- How modern dev tools can monetize through seats, storage/compute, or tokens, with tokens currently being the most profitable
- Why Nikita advises DevTools founders to understand the business model framework and align it with their strategy
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
52:57Episode 122
Jacob Eiting - CEO of RevenueCat: Extreme dogfooding
Jacob Eiting, CEO of RevenueCat, joins us to discuss mobile developers and how they're different, RevenueCat's recent acquisition of Dipsea - and how it helps them dogfood.
We also go hard on content - something RevenueCat is great at.
We also talk about charisma in founders (but don't worry neither of us said rizz)
This was especially fun because I actually used RevenueCat way before I started this show.
We also go hard on content - something RevenueCat is great at.
We also talk about charisma in founders (but don't worry neither of us said rizz)
This was especially fun because I actually used RevenueCat way before I started this show.
We discuss:
- How RevenueCat simplifies in-app subscriptions and why mobile monetization is more complex than it appears.
- Making developers feel like heroes instead of struggling with tedious implementation.
- RevenueCat’s acquisition of Dipsea—a customer with over 100,000 subscribers—and how it benefits both companies.
- The advantages of operating an app at scale to better test and iterate on new RevenueCat features.
- How in-app subscription businesses differ from traditional SaaS in terms of pricing, churn, and optimization.
- The importance of content marketing and transparency in building trust with developers.
- The role of personality and authenticity in developer-first marketing.
- The long-term vision for RevenueCat and how they plan to expand beyond their core subscription infrastructure.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs. https://workos.com/
Links:
- Jacob Eiting (https://x.com/jeiting)
- RevenueCat (https://www.revenuecat.com/)
- Dipsea (https://www.dipseastories.com/)
45:50Episode 119
Søren Bramer Schmidt - founder & CEO of Prisma
Søren Bramer Schmidt, co-founder and CEO of Prisma, joins us to discuss the journey of building one of the largest developer communities in DevTools.
Søren shares how Prisma's deliberate strategies have shaped its growth, feature prioritization, and the launch of new products like Prisma Postgres.
We also explore the challenges of managing a vast user base and how Prisma is adapting to shifts in application development.
Søren shares how Prisma's deliberate strategies have shaped its growth, feature prioritization, and the launch of new products like Prisma Postgres.
We also explore the challenges of managing a vast user base and how Prisma is adapting to shifts in application development.
We discuss:
- How intentional partnerships with educators and influencers fueled Prisma’s early growth.
- Strategies to engage the GraphQL community and gain visibility on platforms like Hacker News.
- Managing a large developer community while balancing innovation with stability.
- The evolution from Graphcool to Prisma ORM, including lessons from early pivots.
- Launching Prisma Postgres and how community feedback influenced its development.
- Implementing a simple, usage-based pricing model and reducing infrastructure costs through self-hosting.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs. https://workos.com/
Links:
- Prisma (https://www.prisma.io/)
- Prisma Postgres (https://www.prisma.io/postgres)
- Feldera (https://feldera.com/)
43:46Episode 75
Glauber Costa from Turso
Glauber Costa is the founder of Turso - a fully managed SQLite database platform.
Glauber shares how to make great CLIs, the story of Turso's pivot. Their pricing. And the importance of moving fast.
Links:
Glauber shares how to make great CLIs, the story of Turso's pivot. Their pricing. And the importance of moving fast.
Links:
- Turso - https://turso.tech/
- Glauber's Twitter - https://twitter.com/glcst
This episode is sponsored by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
31:57Episode 74
Making mobile apps for developers, with Anders Borum - creator of the most popular git client, Working Copy
Anders Borum shares how he created the number 1 git app in the app store - Working Copy.
What we talk about:
What we talk about:
- The origins of Working Copy
- Word of mouth vs App Store Optimisation
- One time vs recurring subscription
Links:
- Anders - https://twitter.com/palmin
- Working Copy - https://workingcopy.app/
- Rauno https://twitter.com/OvalSoftware
This episode is sponsored by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
29:25Episode 47
Top of Hacker News with Anh-Tho from Lago
Anh-Tho is the founder of Lago https://www.getlago.com/
Lago gives you open-source metering and usage-based billing
Lago gives you open-source metering and usage-based billing
28:53Episode 45
How SigNoz grew to 12k GitHub stars with Pranay Prateek
Pranay Prateek is the founder of SigNoz - Open Source Observability with Traces, Logs and Metrics in a single pane.
Topics covered:
Topics covered:
- How SigNoz has grown to 12k stars
- How did you get started with the open source model?
- And have there been any teething challenges.
- Apart from growth, have there been any other benefits?
- What is the path to monetization (question from Utpal Nadiger)?
- Could you talk about your technical writer program?
Links:
- SigNoz https://signoz.io/
- Pranay's Twitter https://twitter.com/pranay01?s=20