I don't have a team at the moment, but I used to lead a team of 5 engineers when I was still working in corporate America and here are my thoughts:
A native client that I still have to open separately much like a Chrome tab wouldn't drastically improve my productivity or my team's productivity. It would basically be the same as using chat.openai.com directly and I wouldn't buy it.
I would be more interested in something like Copilot for VS code - so for B2B I would suggest you approach this from a different perspective i.e. build tight integration into some existing workflow that has pain points (such as software dev -- and for that reason I think building an AI integration for VS Code was smart on GitHub/Microsoft's part), instead of trying to get businesses to pay for a separate app.
Then again, you're getting sales using the separate app approach so I can't fault you at all, but I do think the bar is different/higher for B2B if you're going to ask for a higher price.
For B2B, it also helps a lot to have some relationships to get started and get referrals for other businesses that might need this product. Sales cycles are quite long and I'm experiencing that now with one of my products (#rmflags). Sometimes decisionmakers go on vacation, lots of different teams need to be convinced before a purchase can be made, etc. Just be prepared to deal with some bullshit that you wouldn't have to with a B2C business.
Thanks for the advice Ben. I was thinking of targeting small businesses, not enterprises. Hopefully that would minimize red tape and with shorter sales cycle :D
One direction I think could work is to keep BoltAI as a standalone app like it is now, then I started building more integrations. Though this seems to take a lot more dev efforts 🤔
Yep, selling to smaller startups definitely helps - I would still expect some of those issues, just to a lesser extent. Your pricing may also have to be lower since their budgets will be lower relative to a big company.
I don't have a team at the moment, but I used to lead a team of 5 engineers when I was still working in corporate America and here are my thoughts:
A native client that I still have to open separately much like a Chrome tab wouldn't drastically improve my productivity or my team's productivity. It would basically be the same as using chat.openai.com directly and I wouldn't buy it.
I would be more interested in something like Copilot for VS code - so for B2B I would suggest you approach this from a different perspective i.e. build tight integration into some existing workflow that has pain points (such as software dev -- and for that reason I think building an AI integration for VS Code was smart on GitHub/Microsoft's part), instead of trying to get businesses to pay for a separate app.
Then again, you're getting sales using the separate app approach so I can't fault you at all, but I do think the bar is different/higher for B2B if you're going to ask for a higher price.
For B2B, it also helps a lot to have some relationships to get started and get referrals for other businesses that might need this product. Sales cycles are quite long and I'm experiencing that now with one of my products (
#rmflags). Sometimes decisionmakers go on vacation, lots of different teams need to be convinced before a purchase can be made, etc. Just be prepared to deal with some bullshit that you wouldn't have to with a B2C business.
Thanks for the advice Ben. I was thinking of targeting small businesses, not enterprises. Hopefully that would minimize red tape and with shorter sales cycle :D
One direction I think could work is to keep BoltAI as a standalone app like it is now, then I started building more integrations. Though this seems to take a lot more dev efforts 🤔
Yep, selling to smaller startups definitely helps - I would still expect some of those issues, just to a lesser extent. Your pricing may also have to be lower since their budgets will be lower relative to a big company.