My 2 cents about the Spine License

infinite · 20 Ara 2013

First off, congrats on making an excellent product. I think Spine is a awesome product and it has a ton of potential.

I am a fan and a fellow Seattleite in the 'industry', though I am not representing the company I work for in any way. I really want Spine to succeed and I think that you need to setup yourself todo so. Being a startup in Seattle is very expensive and that is going to work against you unless you are tapping into the talent pool and hiring. As you are now going down the path of a Technology company you should really consider your game plan and your team layout? If you were playing a Technology Startup video game would you hire a full-time artist when money is tight or would you hire another dev or event a part time community manager? Founders who really care about the company succeeding can still retain ownership and be invested in the company but not be on the payroll.

Finally, I would also revisit your 'Enterprise' licenses. Look how successful Adobe and other major companies are when they announced that companies with a certain profit margin have to pay more. Then look at products like GitHub, Sales force etc that do good Tier systems. You have very log price point to start, but as that price point goes up do does what you get out of it. I personally would hate to pay for the 'Enterprise' license unless there was some serious support?

Anyway, some food for thought or just my 2 cents.

Cheers,
Hays

Nate · 21 Ara 2013

Hi Hays,

Thanks for your input. It's good to have many advisers!

I grew up in Seattle but I actually live in Croatia. Spine hasn't been successful enough to hire anyone, so it is still just myself (dev) and Soeren (artist).

We need at least 3 price points: 1) low for students, hobbyists, etc, 2) middle for professionals, and 3) high for large companies.

If 1 & 2 were not separated, it would be too expensive for many, or it would be too cheap for many. Being too cheap means there is more risk of us having to go back to a normal job, and we do not want that!

The Enterprise price point is a way of taxing the rich to feed the poor (us ). A large company like Supercell or Glu Mobile doesn't care at all about the chump change we ask for the Enterprise price point, but it means a lot to us. It is the only recurring income we have, and we hope it will keep us going for some time.

Comparing Spine to GitHub and other large companies is really apples and oranges. They are massive and sell to the masses. We are small and sell a niche product.

Another way to look at it, it would take 3-4 developers about a year to build Spine in-house. _3k/year to license Spine is a bargain for a company large enough to have a budget for these things. It may be a toss up for a company making exactly 500k/year, but one making 1M, 10M, or 3B its a no brainer. That is the logic at least.

-Nate