The Guides.co platform is a network that acts as both a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product and as a marketplace (individuals can publish and subscribe to content).

SaaS (software)

Organizations can use the Guides platform to create and manage private documents and share amongst members, like employee manuals, processes & procedures, etc… Many companies use the platform for this purpose including corporations, franchises, and small businesses. This could be considered a "single-player mode".

Associations, institutions, and industry leaders / influencers can use the Guides platform to connect with partners to collect, create, and curate useful content collectively and share / promote each others' guides to educate, improve coordination, and increase common knowledge across an ecosystem.

Marketplace

Guides is also an online marketplace with classic supply ("publishers" of guides) and demand ("consumers" of the guides). For publishers, Guides offers similar benefits to Youtube, but for documents. They can create and publish documents on Guides and embed them on their site and partner sites. This increases their distribution potential, provides better analytics, and more control in maintaining content. Increased supply (more guides) drives more users who subscribe to content (similar to Pinterest).

A combined SaaS and Marketplace Combined

This dual model of software and marketplace helps solve a classic "chicken and egg" problem for marketplaces and SaaS product growth. Many "users" signup for the "single-player mode" benefits, but get much more benefit as they subscribe to content from partners, suppliers, etc… As more users signup and the network grows, the value increases for creators / publishers. At the same time, each creator / publisher attracts more users who can use it to manage their private documents.

This is not a unique model. A well-known example is Open Table which launched in 1999 as a way for consumers to book dinner reservations and a software for restaurants to manage their table seating in-house. In May, 2009 the company went public, and in 2014 was acquired for $2.6B.

Similar to the example of Open Table, the ultimate goal for Guides is that individuals and organizations join the network because there is valuable content that helps them and / or their group be successful - from product support documentation to government tax regulations - providing a hub (software) where 80% of the knowledge is sourced from external sources; and publishers join because all of their "customers" are already there, making it the most efficient way to reach them.

Four customer "types"

Pricing

Guides.co uses a freemium pricing model offering a free plan for individuals and organizations and optional upgrades to paid plans of $79/month (Hub⁺) and $1,000/month (Hub^e) for unlimited users and content.

This model reduces the barrier for individuals and organizations who want to use Guides as a repository for managing private documents (ex: company handbooks, best practices) or as a publishing platform to expand distribution.

Providing a full-featured free plan is aligned with our goal of making knowledge accessible to everyone, and is also industry best practice for achieving viral growth.

Popular examples of "freemium" software includes Spotify, Google, MailChimp, Box, Evernote, and Skype. For lightweight business apps, examples include Trello, a popular "freemium" task management software launched in 2011 was acquired by Atlassian in 2017 for $425M with 19 million users on track to reach 100M. Dropbox grew to 200M users in six years and was valued at $8B in 2013.

While this model helps platforms scale faster, it is not a sustainable model until the platform hits a critical mass.