Micro-Financing Future Features

[enginpost]

I LOVE, absolutely love, that you have not embraced the subscription model. I want to be able to buy software and own my copy and not have to keep investing to keep using it. Having said that... I have an idea!

What if you created a pre-investing model? Here is how that could work.

1. You maintain control of the product trajectory
2. You can pull ideas from the forums as well as from market research to determine your next core features
3. Additional enhancement features for next software version could be added using the following micro-financing model:
   1. Affinity could create a pre-investing member area.
   2. In that area, Affinity lists the "non-core features" it could build that are not part of the next core features
   3. Pre-investors could "buy votes" by paying, in advance for the next version: $50(USA) = 50 votes
   4. Pre-investors could place their votes on the non-core feature list
   5. Each non-core feature could have a different vote-financing goal
   6. Members could buy more votes (pre-invest $150 for 150 votes) to boost their interest in one non-core feature over another.
   7. For a non-core feature to get added to the next version roadmap, it has to (a) meet the vote-financing goal and (b) gain a top count of votes
   8. Non-core features are added until the next version roadmap has filled up and voting stops
4. Factors for voting;
   1. Voting doesn't ensure you get your preferred non-core feature
   2. Affinity decides which non-core features are being voted on because their research ensures that is a good trajectory for their product
   3. More investment in a non-core feature might work as a market research tool
   4. As a member, I would know that I want to invest, but voting might increase my likelihood of associating with the future of the product in a financially predictive manner.
   5. Being a member only awards me non-core feature votes and not product ownership (but would result in a pre-order for the next version).

I, for one, would invest early if it meant I could influence through real investment.

If I didn't want to re-invest, I could still purchase whatever you build, just as I do today. There wouldn't be a change for people who don't want to invest the time and money into the future of the product.

If people were really interesting in having more of an influence in future features, they could "campaign" in a healthy and invested way that aligns with partnering with you rather than trying to create pressure and pseudo voting in forums in a manner that leads misguided people to disappointment.

[wonderings]

How would this change how they operate? You would need a team monitoring and dealing with these people who would now feel more entitled because they have paid for votes. I think Affinity has their road map and probably have a good long term direction. The spaces they are in are not new, they are established fields for the people who use page layout, vector and photo editing. That whole setup just sounds like a world of headache and a crew of people to now stay on top of what is going on and then what if people keep voting or want something they have no interest in bringing out any time soon?. The 3 apps are incredibly feature rich at a ridiculously cheap price in my opinion and I hope they are able to maintain and continue on developing as they are. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, enginpost said:

I, for one, would invest early if it meant I could influence through real investment.

If I didn't want to re-invest, I could still purchase whatever you build, just as I do today. There wouldn't be a change for people who don't want to invest the time and money into the future of the product.

If people were really interesting in having more of an influence in future features, they could "campaign" in a healthy and invested way that aligns with partnering with you rather than trying to create pressure and pseudo voting in forums in a manner that leads misguided people to disappointment.

I suspect the overhead to manage such a system would cost significantly more in time and resources than Affinity would ever receive in 'investment' from it. As for being able to 'influence' and 'create pressure' (or 'partner with'), I'm not sure either of those things are beneficial to Serif or it's products when you have hundreds or thousands of 'investors' (or 'partners') all with different needs and agendas looking to apply their purchased influence upon the company, and its products.

LiveCode used to hold funding drives, which were much like a Kickstarter in that they would solicit funds from the community to directly fund development of key features that the community had requested. These worked for LiveCode in that it enabled them to fund (without using their own capital/financing) the development of these features from the community, but it also created some strange expectations/dynamics, which ultimately hurt their reputation in the long-run.

[Pšenda]

2 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

The absolutely inevitable result of people paying and then not receiving what they hoped for, even understanding those are the rules, is a bunch of unhappy people. 'Affinity took my money and didn't deliver...'

As I often do today - I bought an obviously cheap (benefit / price ratio) product (even at a 50% discount), and it can't do exactly what Photoshop, Corel,... How is that even possible?!

 

2 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Let's say a new feature costs $50,000, and $40,000 was raised.

The real cost of developing a function is usually not known in advance, and in the vast majority it is also significantly underestimated. Thus, decision-making according to selected votes/money will not be meaningful and appropriate to reality.

[wonderings]

I am not active in other software forums, but is this the norm with people suggesting how the business should operate and how they should do things? This is not isolated to this post but others. Seems everyone knows how Serif should work.