vs. Linode
DigitalOcean
Cheap self-serve acquisition at volume
- What it did
- 3.5 million monthly community visitors; sales and marketing 11-14% of revenue
- Linode
- About 150,000 customers and roughly $100 million revenue at the 2022 sale
Strategy Map›Layer 5 · Go-to-Market Strategy›Sales Motion/The first purchase+ from outside the named canon
Self-Serve Only
What is Self-Serve Only?
Customers buy online without sales contact, and during its growth the company had no sales team converting larger accounts, or cut it back.
How Self-Serve Only works
Buyers purchase online without talking to anyone, which keeps acquisition cheap but leaves larger accounts unconverted unless the product sells itself to them.
How companies won with Self-Serve Only
From the win chains in Strategy Canon case studies: what the winner did, and what its rival did at the same step.
vs. Akamai · 2010–12
Cloudflare
Free, self-serve plan spread through hosts
- What it did
- Free core service with paid features bought online from launch (Sept 2010)
- Akamai
- Revenue billed on traffic delivered, sold by a direct sales force and 100+ channel partners such as AT&T and IBM to enterprises like Apple and eBay (2015)
vs. Rally Software · 2002–15
Atlassian
Innovation: a professional issue tracker bought online at team prices, with no salesperson
- What it did
- Founders built Jira after bug trackers failed their support work (2002)
- Rally Software
- Sold one-year subscriptions through a direct sales force
Also tagged: HipChat · Squarespace · SurveyMonkey
The question to ask of a company
Did anyone sell to the larger accounts, and when?
Who names it
| Author | What they call it / where it appears |
|---|---|
| Christoph Janz + | Low-touch models for mice and rabbits |
Note. Near miss: A developer tool with self-serve sign-up and an enterprise team hired in its third year. Does not count: A company whose self-serve base was converted by an early sales layer (Product-Led Sales).