Day 711: Small vs. Big Customers

Had a call today with a company that was interested in using Browserflow to automate some core workflows for their team. I don’t get nervous for these calls because I realized that I’m genuinely indifferent to the outcome — I don’t feel like I “need to get the sale”. In fact, I’m getting to the point where I actively don’t want the sale.

I know that there’s a ton of money to be made from selling to these kinds of companies with large budgets, but helping a company build a custom flow for their particular situation is way less interesting and motivating for me than building improvements for everyone. That is, if I had to choose between having 5 customers paying $2000/month or 500 customers paying $20/month, I’d definitely choose the latter. When working with these bigger clients, I’m basically acting as a freelancer and although there’s the potential for them purchasing on a large plan, it just doesn’t seem like the best use of my time right now.

I also think it has to do with the difference in the customer type. When someone wants to set up an exploratory call to see whether Browserflow is a good fit for them, it’s often the case that they haven’t tried using Browserflow themselves and want me to build a solution for them. Building flows for people was initially useful for learning the areas where Browserflow can improve, but I think I’m starting to hit the point of diminishing returns where I’m not learning as much from doing these custom solutions.

In contrast, I absolutely love hearing from people who are building their own flows and simply need a little guidance to get unstuck. Since my long-term vision is to be able to have any self-motivated person be able to learn Browserflow and take full advantage of automation, helping the self-sufficient users gives me valuable insights into where Browserflow can improve in terms of documentation and usability.

So starting from now, I’m going to turn down calls as much as I can so that I can focus on scalable support. I love the Plausible team’s strategy of trying to help everyone go through self-service successfully by focusing on documentation and improving the product rather than setting up sales calls and custom onboarding sessions.

I can always decide to move upmarket later on if need be. For now, focusing my efforts on better documentation and doing things that benefit all users seems more beneficial and fun.