Unvalidated Ideas #008

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License Pricing Dataset (Tier: B)

Enterprise companies buy enterprise licenses, and most of them have little idea what the enterprise next to them is paying... I bet they'd pay for an upper hand in the negotiating process by knowing where the price floor is, or some automated negotiation on their behalf.

This is pretty much a no brainer: Glassdoor (back when it was good, and focused on salaries) for enterprise purchasing and procurement. It's so much of a no-brainer that tons of people have already done it, so this idea isn't quite "unvalidated".

So where's the alpha/profit? Niching down could be the answer -- modern tech startups care very much about software licensing in particular, and that niche is worth selling to with an ultra specialized but simple to understand brand. Help them get software (and often deals with other startups) for cheaper and they'll come back for more.

You know how YC companies very often sell their services to other YC companies? Make a cool club like that, without the accelerator.

No need to ignore the other companies in the procurement space though -- they basically already have this information (they know what their clients and others are paying), and leverage it to their advantage. Look for ways to do one of the following:

• Provide procurement or procurement-adjacent services to businesses
• Sell software and possibly data/analysis to existing procurement platforms

Either of these would be extremely profitable niches -- serving to keep the markets efficient.

Read my raw notes >

NOTE I rate this idea a B mostly because the market is quite crowded -- there are a bunch of other startups that have realized this is a good idea, though there are fewer that focus especially on software licenses.

Another great angle to this idea is making this information available so companies know what to charge (though to be fair, a little bit of competitor research would uncover that).

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Victor (vados@vadosware.io)