[HN Gopher] Great SaaS Demos Enabled by DevOps Tools
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       Great SaaS Demos Enabled by DevOps Tools
        
       Author : regiswilson
       Score  : 46 points
       Date   : 2021-03-19 15:28 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (releasehub.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (releasehub.com)
        
       | ProAm wrote:
       | Do people really need a tool to do this? This is tech sales 101.
       | Everyone does this.
        
         | sokoloff wrote:
         | Everyone most certainly does not do this.
         | 
         | Source: I've seen a lot of demos that would have benefited from
         | this and am responsible for a group who is not yet doing this,
         | but needs to begin doing so. (I agree it's elementary tech
         | sales, but it might 201 level as a lot of places succeed
         | without it; we've been selling to semi-captive internal
         | customers so long that we didn't prioritize this. Other
         | companies clearly get by without this as well, even to fully
         | arms-length customers.)
        
           | k__ wrote:
           | I worked with a bunch of startups and none of them did this.
        
       | chatmasta wrote:
       | I enjoyed the post, and the startup looks cool as well. I can
       | clearly see the pain point. I think it will be a challenge
       | positioning this product, because in order for a customer to be
       | able to use it, presumably they already need relatively mature
       | DevOps pipelines, in order to give Release(Hub?) something they
       | can deploy/manage. And if I already have automated builds and a
       | CI pipeline, is it really that much more work to automate sandbox
       | deploys as well? Why wouldn't I deploy to my own infra, or some
       | hosted k8s service, or GitLab Auto-DevOps?
       | 
       | I'm sure you've thought about this challenge, so I'm curious what
       | your plans are in terms of adding value outside of "deploy to
       | sandbox" workflows that can be replicated by CI tools and cloud
       | providers (keep in mind that VC-funded startups, presumably your
       | ideal customer, often have $100k+ in cloud credits to burn
       | through). I see data snapshots, so that's a start maybe. But are
       | you working on anything that will be hard to replicate?
       | 
       | (Also, unrelated, but I love the design!)
        
       | k__ wrote:
       | A good DevOps pipeline is generally a good investment.
       | 
       | It might seem like the cherry on top, but being able to move fast
       | and safely break things makes development more fun, not just for
       | the developers.
        
       | ksm1717 wrote:
       | Does anyone get any use out of chat bot corner pop ups other than
       | feeling patronized? You could create one that calls your users
       | names or responds with middle finger emojis and nobody would
       | notice.
        
         | tommy_mcclung wrote:
         | On our blog it has been pretty good to get newsletter signups.
         | We tried just having a 'subscribe to our newsletter' section
         | but no one filled that out. I moved it over to Intercom as an
         | experiment and it actually worked. For our main site it's
         | barely worth it... we get a few questions here and there.
        
       | ianpurton wrote:
       | I only do video demonstrations now, even internally.
       | 
       | They go a lot quicker as I can edit out unnecessary typing etc.
       | Then there's no need to be on site and do a demo just send a
       | link.
        
         | tommy_mcclung wrote:
         | That works for some use cases, but what I've found makes the
         | best demo is to ask the potential customer what pain points
         | they are experiencing and then I cater my demo exactly to their
         | pain points. Making the demo interactive helps get the prospect
         | to engage. When I get the customer talking it's amazing what
         | they will tell you and the demo can take better shape.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | redis_mlc wrote:
         | What tools do you use for making your video demonstrations?
        
       | chrisweekly wrote:
       | FTR, this is not about great demos that happen to have been
       | enabled by devops tools -- it's about "ReleaseHub" which can
       | (among other things) help in the creation of great demos. I
       | almost skipped the article bc of this ambiguity. HTH
        
         | andrewfromx wrote:
         | Oh c'mon I thought it was well written and NOT just a sales
         | pitch for the product. The author clearly had experiences to
         | share and this product demonstrated a solution.
        
       | grumblestumble wrote:
       | This is an advertisement for a service disguised as an
       | informative article. The info it provides is pretty basic and
       | it's just farming clicks for signups from HN.
        
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       (page generated 2021-03-19 23:03 UTC)