I launched Mokkapi at the start of April. It’s been an interesting ride, but I never actually wrote out why that tool, and why that business model. The tool part is fairly self explanatory, but it makes even more sense in light of the business model choice, so let me explain why I’m zigging, when everyone else seems to be zagging.

Specifically, I believe many end users would prefer to manage their costs with a single bill for software, and not deal with the per user per month (PUPM) model that SaaS incorporates. I think there’s also a very good reason why a lot of tools should have an on-prem deployment version. This offers direct control and customization, especially for tools that are part of the development and deployment parts of the product development life cycle (PDLC), this control allows for tighter customization.

This business model innovation (or regression) meant that to find an ideal product to test this out with, meant focusing on the development and deployment aspects of the PDLC. For the end user this means a very compelling reason to switch off other tools, because even if hosting cost $50 a month (which is probably on the high end for most tools), at $500 a year, that’s a savings point of 10 users for a tool that is $10 PUPM (many tools cost significantly more). The savings only ramps up from there obviously.

Another element that I want to deliberately look at in my products, is I want a tool that is effectively invisible most of the time. It just works. This means I don’t need to compete with all the fancy AI use cases (which fascinate me too!) but focus on some boring core use case. This way metrics like monthly active users or time spent in the app aren’t the right proxy for value being derived from the tool. I want to align my success with that of the end user, and that means removing incentives for upsell that don’t lead to disproportionate benefit to the user.