Appward

The time for SaaS bundling is here. Here's why early stage startups will soon start buying a bundled library of "all you can eat" SaaS for a fixed price of $10k/month: BACKGROUND: “There are only 2 ways to make money in business: Bundling and Unbundling”. Those famous words were spoken by Jim Barksdale, CEO of Netscape. - In the 90’s bundling of software was common practice - Then we witnessed the unbundling of software - Best of Breed took over with plenty of choices and innovation - It resulted in an increase in overall cost of tech and IT - Software spend now accounts for +14% of a typical company’s expense For SMBs in particular, the purchase of software is costly. Founders have to separately buy SaaS for HR, Finance, Product, Marketing, Sales, CS, Engineering and Project Management. It makes no sense. And churn in SMB SaaS is at an all time high. SOLUTION: If we can have... Spotify “All you can listen music” at fixed price.  Netflix “All you can watch content” at a fixed price. Then why can't we have BundledSoftware(.)com “All the software you need” at a fixed price too? It might seem outrageous at first. But so were Spotify and Netflix. Streamers pioneered an economic model where they pay a minimal fee for listing the content in the catalog. Then if a user consumes the content, they track every minute of content streamed and pay the producer a portion of the user’s subscription. If Netflix can make this model work with $13B in revenues, this model can definitely work given total SaaS market of $300B+. PRICING: Fixed price for unlimited apps and usage (up to # of employees): - Beginner : $2K/mo  (<10 employees) - Grow: $10K/mo  (<40 employees) - Scale: $35K/mo  (<100 employees) USAGE: Companies activate “unlimited” access for all their employees to any apps available in the library for use cases ranging from HR, Finance, Sales, Marketing, Analytics, etc. CHURN: Since the founder is a captive user of this library, it's likely that the user will not buy tools outside of it - thereby reducing churn for the SaaS vendors. Some vendors will prefer to sell to SMB via this fixed price catalog instead of going direct. INTEGRATION: It will be ideal if BundledSoftware(.)com can also integrate to other apps using API to enable seamless transfer of data. This will also ensure retention. MONOPOLY: Similar to ride share companies, I suspect a few dominant SaaS catalogs will create an oligopoly, thereby restricting market access for new entrants. TAKEAWAY: Best of Breed has caused havoc. We will see increased bundling of software at the bottom of the market. This will drive SaaS prices down and change the way software is purchased. If there’s an economic model to make money on ALL YOU CAN EAT BUFFET... There’s money to be made with ALL YOU CAN EAT SOFTWARE too. If you end up building it, please don't forget to thank me in cash or equity :) Don’t wait another 40 years for the next unbundling opportunity. Act now.