alt Hacker NewsUsed Harvest for many years. Was talking to an agency owner friend of mine who had been using it, but once Bending Spoons jacked up the price they jumped for their own self-cooked version.
The "SaaS is dead" narrative is a bit overblown, but private equity needs to think twice before gouging folks these days.
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Bending Spoon is not owned by a PE, but they act like so. They somehow managed to borrow huge amounts of money from banks and investors on their own and use that money to buy other companies like a PE would do. Did not know Harvest, but Komoot, Vimeo and more, all of them ruined.
I'm guessing the calculation they made was the increase in price times a lower number of customers is the same or higher and requires fewer support "resources" (humans).
What people don't realize is that if the business sold in the first place it's because the original owners weren't being able to make it profit as it should
Economies of scale are a big deal, hence why the comparison between the Stripe fee and Harvey fee is meaningless
(of course you're free to go to the competition or Vibe your own, but then you start noticing the actual cost of the service vs value added)
"private equity needs to think twice before gouging folks these days"
And yet, they never do.
Maybe PE needs some serious ball and chains added to it by the law to prevent playing robber baron with no consequences.