
PaSH (Product and Service Hybrid) is the New SaaS - amattn
http://amattn.com/2013/10/09/pash_is_the_new_saas_how_jump_long_slow_ramp_death_product_service_hybrid.html
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sixdimensional
I like that there's a new term for this. PaSH, sure, why not!

That said, I can't help but think the following:

1) Before software, there were already products and services.

2) Software came along, and was used by people providing products and
services. In a way, this was already PaSH, kind of, just more indirectly and
it wasn't called that as the emphasis was on the products and services
provided, and not the software.

3) Software began being provided by "application service providers" (ASPs),
which sort of evolved into SaaS (software as a service). We even sort of
commandeered the term "services" as an abstraction over software/business
services as in "web services".

4) Now we are talking about "software", plus the old meaning of "service",
where the two are fused into one.

It's a new word (but not really a new concept) for a somewhat more recent
organizational form ("service based organizations").

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amattn
The main idea is that there is a nice middle ground between pure SW, low touch
SaaS apps and consulting services.

In particular this middle ground can actually help support a SaaS app until it
reaches some level of critical mass. The early days of a PaSH app is about
risk mitigation. A later stage company can use it to drive revenue up.

It's definitely not new, but it is a model I'm seeing more and more small team
SaaS operators adopt.

Customers find it valuable because it ends up being a form of low cost,
optimized outsourcing.

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programminggeek
It took a while for the post to get there, but the point is incredibly spot
on. Building out a product is hard and getting to big money is hard, but
people and companies pay for service all the time. Turning a service into a
product is something I've been thinking a lot about lately and there seems to
be an interesting spot forming between consulting and products.

The most interesting thing to me is the potential revenue difference between
just a product and just a service.

For example, take something like Shopify. They are purely a product, they
charge $79 and it's totally hands off. If you were doing a custom shopping
cart or whatever, you might charge $5,000 or something to build/cusotomize a
solution.

There is very likely a place where you could run someone's store for them for
like $500-1,000 a month without them having to touch anything. You could hire
and train someone to run these stores and each person could run say 100
stores. That is 50-100k per month per person running those stores.

It would not be super difficult to find that many customers and be able to pay
people to service those customers well. The outcome for said customers would
likely be better than if they had to manage it themselves, but it would be a
lot better than what most build and move on type consultant type arrangements
would provide.

The same idea applies to a lot of niches, not just e-commerce. I suspect there
will be a lot of offerings that pop up in the next few years that do exactly
this.

~~~
yogo
Yes, this sounds almost exactly like what they do at
[http://niftyengine.com](http://niftyengine.com). It seems like something that
can work.

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sybhn
Don't services come naturally in SaaS? Because of its subscriptions model
nature, you usually want to make sure your customer are successful and grow
with you. I've seen entire groups within SaaS organization dedicated to
customer success (on boarding, education, etc). Which part is being billed and
which isn't seems to vary however.

