Rarely do you see an executive take the “stage” and decry bloated software or how another company is marketing or producing its services, but Sridhar Vembu, co-founder of Zoho, did.
On X, Andrew Wilkinson decried the high cost of software costs in one of the digital signature apps he was using. Sridhar Vembu, co-founder of Zoho replied that Zoho produces great software, with lots of value at a much lower cost (and often better) than its competitors.
DocuSign is a supremely bloated company that sells super over-priced enterprise software. We solve that problem with Zoho Sign and we don’t need 6705 employees to produce digital signature software. In fact, so much “enterprise Saas” fits the “supremely bloated company that sells super over-priced enterprise software”. As the Saas bubble deflates, customers of the over-priced enterprise Saas will have the same reaction as Andrew. Useful heuristic: consider public Saas players that are your vendors and look at their sales and marketing expense vs their R&D expense. If they are spending a lot more selling the software to you than building it in the first place, that is a very good signal you can save a ton of money replacing them.
Sridhar Vembu, Soho Cofounder
I followed Zoho’s journey for many years and have had the honor to sit with Sridhar a few times, especially in their early years when he and his colleagues would be on media tours and open up a computer and show the latest versions of their software in a hotel lobby.
Zoho has been consistent in a few key areas:
- A focus on what’s best for their customers for the long time
- Not selling customer data to 3rd parties
- Doing what’s best for their employees and avoiding layoffs, etc
- Knowing that version one of the products might not be the best but they’ll keep getting better and better.
- A philosophy that they need to make money, yes, but not at the expense of gouging the customer or being beholding to a Wall Street stock market which drives the prices even higher.
- Great software engineering and security to get what they make to perform as efficiently and as best as can be done – always innovating.
Zoho’s pricing is straightforward and simple and requires no credit card to try it out and see how it works.
What does his mean for you?
- Software costs are important. The “small” monthly fees can add up to big costs for your business overhead.
- Be with a company that has a track record of success. A company that’s gone in a few years will harm your business.
- Be with a mature company who innovates and grows with you and is always making their software better and better.
