>But yeah, to me it still just screams "if you have to ask, you can't afford it".
We're talking about buying product: I have at least to ensure the product does what I need it to do before even considering buying the product, and I can do that on my own. We're not talking about selling airplanes here, where there might be some setting up required for me to test the specs, neither are we talking about software targeted to governmental agencies or the intelligence community. We're talking about products that claim they do X for the knowledge worker, but fail to provide a way for a knowledge worker to test X.
This can be turned to: "If you have to talk to me before I could use or buy the product, something's fishy".
That's Theranos/Nikola hyping the product with claims it can do things but nobody ever saw it do that thing.
I get the price segmentation argument, though there may be better ways to extract more value by providing tailored services to large clients to solve problems only large clients have.
We're talking about buying product: I have at least to ensure the product does what I need it to do before even considering buying the product, and I can do that on my own. We're not talking about selling airplanes here, where there might be some setting up required for me to test the specs, neither are we talking about software targeted to governmental agencies or the intelligence community. We're talking about products that claim they do X for the knowledge worker, but fail to provide a way for a knowledge worker to test X.
This can be turned to: "If you have to talk to me before I could use or buy the product, something's fishy".
That's Theranos/Nikola hyping the product with claims it can do things but nobody ever saw it do that thing.
I get the price segmentation argument, though there may be better ways to extract more value by providing tailored services to large clients to solve problems only large clients have.