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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Most software buyers buy for reasons which have little do to with features, which after all are generally not perceptible at the point the sale is made. General vibe, risk reducing copy on the website, credible endorsements, words from friends, and the moon being in retrograde all probably matter more than the Nth feature at the margin.

Merely having features will not magically cause customers to discover you or convert from your free trial. Customer churn rates in SaaS are sensitive to many things but feature parity with competitors is generally not a dominating factor, because it's so low on the list of concerns. (The rule-of-thumb in low-touch B2B SaaS is that your churn starts relatively high, hits 5% pretty quickly after you work on it, and then you get long road to 2% as you get better at everything.)

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> Most software buyers buy for reasons which have little do to with features, which after all are generally not perceptible at the point the sale is made.

I have worked for/with a number of Saas companies, including one that was purchased by a major company for a high eight-figure amount, and based on the sales cycles I observed and participated in at each company, the idea that feature set has little to do with purchasing decisions is a ludicrous claim.

Keep in mind this is about low-touch. Typically people stare at a webpage with prices and buttons, and try to figure out if the service solves their problem, if it's reliable, if the UI is comfortable, if support is readily available, if other users like it, or how easy would be to transition from their current solution. Not so much opening a few of them and pulling out a spreadsheet to see which has most features.

Service solves problem == feature.

What happens often is that you get a sale because you support some oddball feature.

Your best bet with SaaS is try to do that. Find a cluster of customers (realtors, doctors, train hobbyists) and over support their oddball features and get a good rep for supporting that vertical. Word of mouth within the cluster will get around (person to person, vertical forums, etc) and you will dominate that space. Once you are the big fish in that small pond feature set, branch outwards to other ponds.

Agreed. Current Features is the #1 reason you'd buy from a small business. Road map of features is why you buy from a big company.

Thanks. Do you think this holds just as true for B2C SaaS? I'm building a product for podcasters. I guess they would be considered B2C since most of them are not making money. Also most of them are sole decision makers.

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