Pricing / entry cost for this tool

[Dan Shafer]

Dennis....

A well-thought-out and appreciated post.

But, as with others who have offered this viewpoint, I am compelled  
to ask you to provide even one example of a development tool company  
following the strategy you describe below that you say is "being used  
by the most successful companies today."

And I'll expand on that a bit. Not only can I not think of a single  
*development tool* company following the strategy of trying to serve  
two markets with a single product, I can't even come up with a single  
successful software company doing that. When I think of successful  
software companies in the desktop universe, I think of:

Microsoft
Adobe
Macromedia (about to be swallowed by Adobe if that hasn't been  
finalized yet)
Apple (partly)
Real
Maybe Oracle (which is a dev tools vendor in large part, but not much  
on the desktop)

Adobe doesn't have a low-cost entry version of Acrobat or inDesign. A  
trial version, yes, but when it expires you pay through the nose to  
keep using it. Same with Macromedia. Apple supports low- and high-end  
users in a couple of its strategic markets, but with two separate  
products, not a low-cost version of the high-priced one. Real has a  
free player but if you want to start creating Real media streams  
you're gonna pay a bundle.

So where are these software companies that are following this two- 
market strategy successfully? To the contrary, I think the secret to  
a successful company -- in any sphere -- is focus. Do what you do  
well and let others do the stuff you don't do well. If RunRev had a  
couple hundred people, *maybe* they could figure out how to serve  
both markets with great success. Short of that, I am unconvinced.

On Nov 26, 2005, at 8:52 AM, Dennis Brown wrote:

> I think that they are more likely to stay in business with the  
> current model --it is the model being used by the most successful  
> companies today.  They are growing (I assume) slowly as the product  
> matures.  At some point I expect this model is going to propel them  
> forward into a larger company that can offer better general support  
> and product bug fixes (I think bugs cost more to fix than adding  
> minor new features), while continuing to support the professionals  
> needs.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author
http://www.shafermedia.com
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