Customers are willing to pay - but I don't know how 🤔
Hello, fellow indie hackers,
as usual, I've come across a problem I did not expect. Here's a summary of the current situation.
I maintain an open-source library for about 4 years. It has growing popularity, serves a niche and is rather a specialized tool than a commodity.
Out of my experience in this field in different companies, I know the problem they have which they try to solve by using that library. On that premise, I'm building a SaaS product to serve that need with currently zero paying customers.
I have two "products":
- a free open-source library
- a SaaS product (that uses the free lib) serving the underlying need
Now I get emails from individuals and companies that want a way to pay me for further developing the open-source library. I'm talking huge corps. But here's the kicker, I don't want to be paid for development time. I want to sell a product.
So what do I do?
I thought about creating a "Pro" version of the OSS library with really advanced features (and a hefty price tag/subscription). Alternatively, I could find out more about how those corps use the library and try to cover their use-case in the SaaS product (which would take much more time, energy and sales-work).
I'm thinking about this for days/weeks now, meanwhile, the willing-to-pay customers are writing to me when and how they could pay me to build what they need (and would save them tons of maintenance work) 🤔.
I need your advice 🙏
some of open source projects are maintaining advanced version for paid users. So you may sell:
it is ok to charge for new feature to be implemented and added into pro version, but consider the allowance to integrate this feature into pro version / saas to make it accessible to other pro users.
Exactly my thoughts.
It's a tested business model, you could implement it in no time, and it's subscription based also.
Building a new SaaS and guessing what their problems are could get messy.
I prefer to build their needs inside your SaaS application, and make it something like enterprise plan so you will need to customized your current SaaS based on their need.
By using this way, you can show their logo/case study in your SaaS for future marketing purpose.
Exactly my wish. I fear their current applications managed by internal developer teams are so intertwined and huge that there is no way I could replace them. But as their internal systems rely on my OSS lib, I could at least get some revenue through that 🤔.
Maybe both options work. OSS Pro for those large enterprises and SaaS product for smaller players that need a new solution. What are your thoughts on that?
@HacksOfSumit I guess it would be better if you could setup calls with them to understand their needs in a deeper way and also simultaneously letting them know that you are creating a business/Pro version of the functionality (with more features obviously).
You could be open with them and ask if they'd be interested in buying the service from your SaaS when it is ready (and that you'd be willing to give them a private version of the library if it works for them as a stop-gap solution). Irrespective of what comes out of it, you'll have much more knowledge than now to decide on your future course. At the very least your ideas about how to pitch your SaaS to new customers might become more concrete.
find out what they want, build it and support it only in your SaaS.
Could you consider licensing it such that if you want to use your library in a commercial product then they have to pay to license it whereas if they aren’t using it commercially then they can use it for free. Ghostscript I believe has paid for commercial and free for non commercial as an example.
Why not just have them as a sponsor of the OSS library, and use the funds to allow you to spend time on the features they want (either do them yourself or hire someone).
I've seen many OS maintainers setup Patreon pages for their projects. Lots of different tiers, depending on what the sponsor wants to do.
You might end up getting support from people that just love using the library, but don't have a specific need.
If the companies contacting you have large enough budgets, you might consider finding a developer (who does want to be paid for development time) and paying them to work with the companies. They could custom build whatever the company will pay for and only contribute back to the main library where it makes sense.
You could take a cut of that and just advise/work with the dev, so you'd be getting paid while you're learning exactly what these companies need. And then after a bit, turn those insights into the product that you can sell more broadly and earn full profit from.
There are lots of hassles that come with finding/hiring a dev and working with large companies, though, haha... but just a thought!
I would go with the premium version of the library. Selling B2B Saas is hard and that could still be a good revenue stream.
Fix YOUR price and propose them. If they pay, start working, if they don't, assess if it worth it for you to ask for less.
Sounds like a great problem to have, congrats!
I like the idea of a pro version, if the feature(s) they want would only/mostly be valued by larger organisations.
However, if they would be valuable to the other open source users too, it might be better to go down a different route.
One option would be allowing “patrons” of some description, coming with benefits like requesting features. You could think of it as a product subscription... An example I’ve seen of this working is pgLoader: https://pgloader.io/moral-licence/
Would love to hear what you decide and how it goes!
Thank you for your thoughts. I also thought about patrons but while it kinda works for some OSS maintainers it's not the business I want to build. I want to build a product and sell it, then scale it. I will definitely post an update once I have a plan but for now I hope to get more advice from this community. Thanks again for taking the time - much appreciated 🙏
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
Thanks so much for your input. I've done this today and before selling anything right now trying to find out more and what would need to happen for them to jump ship on my SaaS product. The pro version of the OSS lib might still be a good revenue stream tho