That’s the marketing reason which I know is your area of expertise.

The bigger driver tho is Wall St behind them who penalise capex heavy businesses and incentivise ARR. That’s why every company has a subscription, even if it doesn’t make sense (ie it’s not attention based). They want the predictability of recurring payments to smooth out business cycles where capex drops in down periods.

Money drives all this stuff. It’s why the DEI crap got a foothold in the corporate world, the financiers made requirements of this crap as part of governance, HR being filled with ideologues with nothing better to do are the perfect commissars for it so it ends up sticking.

Bad incentives creating bad behaviour driving worse incentives driving worse behaviour - that’s the story of the fiat world.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Truth brother, it’s like a rotten onion with many layers… we need to get to the core - take away people’s ability to print money 👌

Subscriptions spread out the cash collection ups and downs. I have worked for several data/software companies where the main purpose to sell monthly based services was to get a better multiple when they exit and help cash flow. This B2B model definitely made its was to B2C. I now have a damn spreadsheet to track all my inconsequential monthly services to make sure I don't die by a thousand paper cuts.