After years of not really getting why people would want human-accountability-as-a-service, I’m thinking there’s a few goals that could use an extra oomph.
They are goals that only get a datapoint every month or so, and I’d really like someone to look at the comment, open up the url and verify that I did the thing.
I looked into Boss-as-a-Service. It looks great, they get Beeminder, and I know some folks here really like it. However, since I really only have 2 things per month I want them to check, I’m not sure the current pricing is effective for me. Also, they’re so popular they’re not taking new signups!
EDIT: I was WRONG about this. This post was WRONG.
This is purely a calendar thing - it’s like with gym memberships. Everyone signs up the first week of January and uses it for a few weeks (which is why they cleverly offered a New Year’s “discount” for paying a year up front).
I personally use BaaS and it’s super great. I’ve also now befriended the founder so I’m biased but I was a BaaS user first! Also I think it’s drastically underpriced and have been trying really hard to convince @manasvinik to raise prices, by a lot. She’s probably super sick of me bugging her about this by now!
Actually, @adamwolf’s concern about not getting his money’s worth only using it twice a month suggests a good way to price discriminate: pricing tiers based on frequency of the checkins.
But the point is, there are people who use BaaS every day to drastically magnify their productivity, follow-through, and life satisfaction. For them, $100/mo or more would not be at all unreasonable and BaaS’s pricing should find a way to charge those people that. Not out of greed but to be sustainable. The service is inherently expensive to provide!
And obviously it’s better to have the service available now at a higher price than to be stuck on a waitlist not getting bossed.
But the waitlist didn’t start until shortly after new year’s. (I know because I was looking into getting it right after new year’s, and it was available, and then after looking into it for a few days, it wasn’t.)
To be clear, I’m not saying anything negative about the service, just saying that closing new sign-ups is a function of the calendar and people’s tendency to start new projects shortly after the new year.
Thanks for reminding me how irrational I’m being about price here.
If I could bill one more hour a month because I’m not procrastinating or apologizing for something, $25 would be a steal, and double that would be just fine.
Heads up, they’re sending batches of invites via email! Make sure you’ve signed up. Don’t hold your breath yet, I’ve signed up in December and still nothing.
I guess having to turn down people because you’re at full capacity is the best kind of problem to have Good for them. It’s a really cool project, I’m glad it’s going great
Yeah, I was pretty sure and just asked @manasvinik and confirmed that signups have been closed the whole time since around the Hacker News thread, late November or early December.
Next interesting question (not sure if @manasvinik endorses this) is whether it would feel unfair for BaaS to let people jump the queue for various reasons, such as willingness to pay more. In my mind that’s highly fair and highly socially efficient and it’s just a matter of doing it in a way that feels fair.
Hi folks, this is Manasvini from Boss as a Service! Catching up with this thread a little late!
Yes, we did start sending out invites, but since it’s not an automated service, we’re sending it out in batches, staggering it so we make sure we can make sure we give everyone a good experience. Happy to send everyone here an invite though, could you PM me your email addresses?
@zedmango we did close soon after the Hacker News feature, before the New Year!
Apologies for necroing this thread - I was really excited about finding BaaS then discovered it was closed, and that no blogs posted or tweets from @manasvinik since 2018… then I saw her posts on this thread!
Am experimenting running my own version via email. If I’m wrong and Baas isn’t dormant, I’d love to get in on it!
Good for them. It’s a really cool project, I’m glad it’s going great