Enterprise Pricing Opacity
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Shaan Puri and Sam Parr discuss how certain industries deliberately keep information opaque, particularly enterprise software pricing, and how making this information transparent could be valuable. They explore this through the lens of Richard Barton's success thesis of "information wants to be free."
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Enterprise Software Pricing Opacity:
- Companies intentionally hide pricing behind "call for pricing" models
- Pricing is often determined by how much money your company makes
- This model is disliked but effective - "I hate it but it works, we do it"
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Information Transparency Examples:
- AngelList: Made investment information more accessible
- Crunchbase: Brought transparency to startup/company data
- Yelp: Made restaurant experiences public and organized
- Glassdoor: Opened up salary and workplace information
- Levels.fyi: Focused on tech company compensation data
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Internal Company Transparency:
- Companies creating anonymous Google docs for salary sharing
- Employees contributing compensation data internally
- Thousands of people contributing to rich salary documents
- Current solution is fragmented (just Excel docs)
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Areas Needing Transparency:
- Freelancer and agency quality/performance
- Software stack information (what tools companies use)
- Enterprise software pricing
- Real user experiences with software products
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Challenges with Information Sharing:
- Getting initial contributors is difficult
- Need right incentives for people to share information
- Value comes after critical mass of information
- Companies often resist transparency
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.