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Comment by rkaplan | Hacker News Reader

I think the name "Filepicker.io" is severely limiting. When I hear "Filepicker.io", I think "easy-to-use library for handling user file uploads." That is rather narrower than their description of the service on their blog: "Filepicker.io helps developers connect to their users' content."

Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoy the Filepicker.io blog. I have never used their product, but from their website, API docs, and blog they seem like a well-run startup with a value-adding service.

Nonetheless, they are hurting themselves with such a specific name. It creates the negative perception of "Feature, Not A Company" that Mark Suster talked about on his blog: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/08/22/fnac-feature-n...

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We've realized that now and are in the process of changing our name. I'd love to chat with you about what you think of some of our ideas

I'm not your customer (because I prefer own root servers over cloud services, and even prefer housing over hosting) - but I think you might stick with your name, because:

1. its a known (brand) name 2. it tells where your product is strong

But I suggest to change the Enterprise pricing tag:

1. Don't tell a price for enterprise. Enterprise customers have a high COCA, so price is always negotiation. 2. Offer enterprise features = Your services runs at their servers, under their control, not as a SaaS, but as a normal enterprise software that comes with installation support, consulting, ...

Thanks for the suggestions. It's a delicate balance between appearing "complete" with the offering versus leaving headroom for customization for larger customers. Increasingly with the consumerization of the enterprise do you think that custom development, consulting etc are a must have to servicing an enterprise?

Usually. My group isn't IT, so with almost every purchase we ask for customization. (IT gets custom stuff too, but they also buy a lot more off-the-shelf stuff.) We have disqualified vendors for not being able to customize their product fast enough or well enough. We pay (a lot) for this. While we could write the code ourselves for a lot of these customizations, the vendor can do it faster and it's easier for us to buy the software than increase our headcount to do the work.

You'd be amazed at how much an enterprise is willing to pay for software, if you have the right niche and are going to make life easier for a bunch of people.

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