Steal this idea: Re-insuring usage-based SaaS billing so buyers pay a flat fee

3 points by cjcjameson 1 year ago | 1 comment

I have ideas for startups from time-to-time... and ideas are a dime a dozen. So I thought I might share one and see if someone wants to rip it off (or point out if someone's already doing it)

Lots of big SaaS/B2B/Data vendors have swung to usage-based pricing. Starting with the databases themselves, charging per query, then everyone got inspired and wanted to act like the cloud providers and Snowflakes/Databricks of the world.

Some providers, there's no going back... there's no way they'd offer flat-rate pricing themselves. But what if a customer wants to buy "all you can eat"? Enter ... a "reinsurance" opportunity (maybe this is just insurance).

It's an ISV play, where you specialize in the actuary of "how much more would X spend on Databricks if it were unlimited for their company" ... offer to charge them a bulk fee, find the buyers who think they want to go wide & big.

Win on the margins. Handle risk in various ways; pay off to some amount of abuse.

To get validation, would you want to see a vibe-coded "coming soon" waitlist-email-gathering page? A small demo? person-to-person outreach and one initial customer?

mmarian 1 year ago |

You're best off finding an initial customer first. It sounds like your target market would be large corporates, as they're the ones to care about minimizing cost volatility. But it's unlikely they'll be willing to sign up to a new startup's service. You need to figure out that conundrum.