While IPVM has always focused on covering enterprise technologies, until recently, IPVM used a consumer go-to-market model (i.e., self-serve, per user, pay by credit card, unlimited access).
Now, IPVM is finishing a transition to a primarily enterprise go-to-market model (i.e., negotiated, per organization, restricted access) that changes how we price and package to support our continued mission.
This post explains what and why we are doing it so subscribers, the industry, and the broader public can understand our approach.
IPVM has long strived to deliver in-depth intelligence, whether through investigative reporting, technology testing, financial and competitive analysis, etc.
We are a team of full-time domain experts (across cybersecurity, engineering, business, finance, law, journalism, technology, criminology (coming soon), etc.) dedicated to conducting in-depth research and reporting that helps our subscribers make important decisions and improve the industries that we cover.
What we learned is that to sustain that model financially, over the long term, requires using an enterprise go-to-market model that ensures larger organizations pay fairly for access.
Specifically, we learned the paradox of depth – doing deeper (higher quality) work actually lowers profits in a consumer model because that work costs radically more than common opinion pieces, but, because they are so niche, delivers far fewer consumer sign-ups while significantly increasing value for a limited number of enterprises (who pay no more because of the constraints of the consumer pricing model).
While blockbuster movies can use a consumer model to deliver expensive, amazingly produced works, that is because tens of millions of people may pay to see those movies. In niches like what IPVM covers or what is commonplace in business-to-business markets, the potential audience is so relatively small, even if free, that the consumer model cannot support depth.
The newsletter approach, using a consumer go-to-market model, most known with Substack, can be financially viable but almost always as a one-person or few-person outlet that publishes opinions but with limited depth and research. IPVM itself inadvertently lived through that in its early days, and that financially worked well but only for a small team and shallower work.
IPVM’s goal is to be deep. To do this, we need an enterprise go-to-market model.
Our first step, in 2022, was the Research service, splitting our most in-depth work into a dedicated higher price tier. And while many, long used to our consumer model, initially protested, it worked out financially much better for us.
In the last year, we have expanded on this approach, including:
- Organizational account minimums – For larger organizations, we are now enforcing minimum pricing to enable access to any IPVM work. This ensures those getting the most value from IPVM pay fairly.
- Verifying work affiliation – for all sign-ups, we now require work emails or LinkedIn verification to know who is signing up to ensure larger organizations pay fairly.
- Restricted public browsing – to ensure those who check IPVM frequently pay fairly, we have restricted public browsing from those who visit frequently.
- Changing public IPVM homepage – we will soon change the IPVM public homepage to a more traditional Enterprise marketing page explaining the value of what we do while showing our newest reporting to those subscribers logged in. [Update March 2024: This is now live. Logged-in subscribers see the same home page as before, but others see the new Enterprise marketing page.]
- Limited low-cost access: We are keeping the entry-level $199 annual plan but have changed it to only those not from larger organizations and are only allowing access to 10 Info+ (non-research) reports per month. (Existing subscribers from small organizations have generally been grandfathered into existing unlimited Info+ plans).
We are adding in (beyond expanding our depth, breadth, and reporting) two new fundamental enterprise elements:
- IPVM employees who talk to organizations about the value IPVM brings, how to get the most out of IPVM, etc.
- Mindshare calls for non-manufacturer organizational subscribers with our experts to answer specific questions about decisions they are looking to make, guiding them through our research, explaining what we have learned and what options to consider.
Tradeoffs exist here. The total number of individual users, readers, and page views will decline (though, in nearly two years since we started this, that has been modest). But that is a necessary refocusing so that the organizations that value our work pay fairly, and those who do not value it appropriately get no access at all.
Ultimately, we are excited about a future with the right go-to-market model for the next 15 years that allows us to go significantly deeper and broader, impacting the industries we are already in and the ones we will enter as we expand.
