Is Statics Good For Business or Not? What Do You Think?

A group of customers overpays you.

If you have a small handful of customers paying you significantly more than most of your customers, you’re no longer a product company — you’re a consulting company working for those big payers. You’ll do what they say — often at the detriment of your smaller customers — because the big guys pay the big bucks.

If you have a small group of customers paying you significantly more than just the actual amount of your customers, you are no longer a product company. Playing an unfair game. You will do what they say - often at the danger of your smaller customers. And if you don’t follow their money with your effort, an exodus of just one or two big customers could seriously impact your bottom line. It could put you at major risk. So instead we take the other approach — a broad customer base where nearly everyone pays us roughly the same amount per month, all things considered. Over 100,000 companies pay for Basecamp, and we don’t play favourites.

Do you know what else it looks like? Insulation. Because it is insulation — insulation from risk. We wouldn’t want this to happen, but because our revenue is so equally distributed across a large number of independent customers if a random 10% of our customers left tomorrow, we’d be fine. We’d never have to cross our fingers and hope that “Customer X” wasn’t part of that 10%. Can you say that about your business?

If you mapped your customers like this, what would your star look like? If you started pulling away your 10 biggest customers, would you see big gaps, or would the holes be swallowed up by the whole? Would it be obvious with a few removed or would you be able to even tell the difference? Are you diversified or dangerously dedicated to a few big bets?