Tag: salesforce

• San Francisco’s tax for the homeless

  Proposition C will be on San Francisco’s ballots this November 6th, 2018. 

  If approved by voters, the following additional taxes would be levied on businesses in order to create a dedicated fund to both support and prevent homelessness in the city:

  For businesses that pay a gross receipts tax, an additional tax of 0.175 percent to 0.690 percent on those gross revenues in San Francisco over $50 million;

  For businesses that pay the administrative office tax, an additional tax of 1.5 percent of their payroll expense in San Francisco.

  Marc Benioff – the founder of Salesforce (which happens to be the city’s largest employer) – has emerged as the lead supporter of Prop C. Between personal and corporate funds, he has contributed almost $8 million to getting this passed.

  But other billionaires in the Bay Area, such as Jack Dorsey of Twitter, have taken a different position, instead siding with Mayor London Breed, who does not support Prop C. 

  If you’re interested in this topic, the New Yorker has a piece called, The Battle of the Big-Tech Titans Over San Francisco’s Tax for the Homeless

  2018.11.02

• The value of relative pricing comparisons

  

  I find the topic of pricing incredibly interesting. How much is someone willing to pay for item X? I’ve said this before, but pricing was one of my favorite classes in business school.

  Here is a line that I really liked from a recent blog post by Tomasz Tunguz’s on price anchoring:

  “Relative pricing comparisons are among the most common method of price rationalization.”

  The topic of his post may not be all that interesting to this audience – it’s about software as service platforms – but the principles should be. 

  In Tomasz’s post he talks about how companies building SaaS products aimed at salespeople will often have their pricing compared to that of Salesforce. In other words, people might say to themselves: Salesforce costs $X per seat. Is this other product worth half of $X? Salesforce is the anchor.

  I can tell you that I do this all the time. (Do you?) I’ll say to myself, condos of this build quality are selling for $Y in this neighborhood. Is this other neighborhood better or worse? If better, how much of a premium might someone apply to it?

  So if you’re in the business of pricing products, you may want to give some thought to how your customers might be anchored when assessing your offering. Relative pricing comparisons allow us to rationalize dollars in our mind.

  2017.05.11