As most of you all know by now, we underestimated the demand for Bandwagon and the blogosphere nailed us for it. We have apologized and owned up to it (here and here) but I want to share some lessons we have learned from this whole experience…
- Own up when you screw up. People forgive you for honest mistakes.
- Be pro-active with your customers, rather than not.
- In today’s world of bloggers, nothing is missed.
- Viral is sometimes not so good.
- Mac users are really freakin’ fanatics.
- People have become digital packrats.
- If it’s too good to be true, it aint!
I want to reassure potential customers that I’m a seasoned entrepreneur that just got caught up in my own product. That won’t happen again. If you still have questions, contact me directly [terpua at xackup dot org].
Moving forward, we are announcing pricing plans in the coming week.
We are also extending free accounts to bloggers (no linkback required) as a way of our apology. Will be posting details in the next few days.
Btw, I would love to hear from other entrepreneurs that have faced similar situations and lessons learned.
We are fixing some bugs before releasing to the general public. Please be patient.
Update feb 22 @23:54 PST: Open for business
Some (here and here) have suggested that bandwagon’s logo is a bit um, phallic. We’ll leave it to the community. Voting ends Feb 21 (wed) at 11:59am PST.
Update: here and here
Update2: here
Update3 (feb21 @11:41): the community has spoken - 60.6% wants it changed. You will see the new logo when we launch.
Our limited introductory pricing is $69/year for unlimited storage and regular pricing at around $99/year (not sure). But based on feedback, looks like you guys have lots of media!
Since we have not announced our long-term model/pricing (except the free edition for bloggers and the limited introductory pricing), what are your thoughts on pricing?
One idea is to use your Amazon S3 account and we charge $1/month for Bandwagon. We would have other editions for other hosting/storage providers like Media Temple and DreamHost.
What would a pricing/model based on community feedback look like?
Our pre-launch has been a bit crazy…more than we expected so a big thanks!
For those that signed up, how many GB of iTunes items do you have? Do you have any videos?
We don’t like those pesky terms of service legalese. It’s one of those necessary evils so that companies can protect themselves. We think differently and to that end, we have come up with our own called “Common Sense” Bill of Rights.
This is a live and working document and would like feedback.
Customer Bill of Rights
1. I expect my items to be available for restore at anytime.
2. I expect my email not to be shared or sold to anyone.
3. I expect a reply to my support emails within 24 hours.
4. I don’t expect a partial refund when I cancel. (Note: we don’t
want to do this but it just takes too much time away from us. That
is why we have the “try for $1?.) [note: this is a special program we will be launching on Feb 22]
5. I expect email communication with the CEO at anytime.
6. I will not sue the company for my own negligence.
Company Bill of Rights
1. No backup in the whole wide world is 100%. It might be 99.9999%
but never 100%.
2. If you don’t backup an item, don’t expect us to have it.
3. If you abuse email communications with the CEO, we have a right to
terminate communications.
4. Bandwagon is not perfect and not crash-proof (what program is?).
5. If there are bugs, we promise to work our butts off to fix it.
Erica Sadun over at O’Reilly’s wrote a piece on Bandwagon…here’s my favorite line:
“What’s nice about Bandwagon is that it’s designed for lazy people…”
She hit the nail on the head. Backing up (any data) is so painful that we postpone it until it’s too late.
Bandwagon helps make life easier for music geeks that backup using rsync/ftp or to cds + dvds.
Until our official launch on Feb 22 PST, we are giving away one-year subscriptions to Bandwagon. You get the full application and unlimited storage (need Mac OS 10.4 + iTunes 7).
To get the one-year account, you must do the following:
You will receive a coupon code via email (make sure we can contact you). You must send your trackback by Feb 22, 11:59am PST to receive your free account.
Update: if you can’t do trackbacks, leave a comment with a link to your blog post.
Update2: your pricing feedback?
Update3 (feb 22, 12:03pm): comments and pingbacks closed.
