▲ | mooreds 2 days ago | |
Nope, I don't think so. We (at FusionAuth) started out the same way, hyperfocused on the needs of bigger customers. It was super helpful, because nothing indicates commitment on both sides in devtools like a customer paying money and a devtool company building out a solution. It also sharpens the team's intuition about what other customers will pay for, as long as you are aware of the market and competition and other solutions. What you don't want this to lead to is being a consulting company for 1-3 big customers. Having an OSS or freemium option (as we do, and Lago does) is a great counterweight to customer demand, pulling the devtool company towards community needs. As you grow, you have more constituencies, and that means that your pool of time to do concierge work for a larger prospect goes down. It doesn't disappear, but it decreases. While we have a product vision we execute against (and I'm sure Lago does too), pulling work forward based on customer demand is a great way to prioritize pieces of it. However, the bigger you get, the more competing voices you hear. When you have limited time, do you focus on: * work needed to land big customers * work needed to land smaller, self-serve customers * work to support existing customers * work to support the community * strategic work that will pay off in months or years Some of these categories overlap, of course, and that's what you want. You try to do it all, but you can't do everything you want. You have to build against the vision while also allocating enough time to support current needs. |