Dear Customer,
We are at one of the most pivotal moments of our history. I am grateful to the many of you who have shared your feedback on LiveCode Create and the changes we are making to licensing. I feel compelled to write to set out the broader context within which these changes are taking place and to address some of the misconceptions that some of you may have.
I am going to share with you candidly more of the inside story.
Whatever your view on Create I hope this is interesting and helps to set the record straight.
Our Story So Far
The hero of our story from my perspective has been the value that we’ve been able to deliver to so many of you, over the more than two decades we have been in operation. We’ve helped so many of you from all walks of life to create software which in many cases you wouldn’t have been able to, or to do so much faster and more easily than you could have with any other platform. Some 47 million people have used software created in LiveCode (and that number represents only the ones we are able to count!) We’ve seen many businesses grow up with the platform, maturing and achieving success ranging from an ongoing lifestyle business to huge enterprise software platforms to fabulously successful exits. Of all that I’m probably most personally proud of the at least a quarter of a million people who learned to code through our platform. Perhaps that speaks to my roots, I of course started with a similar platform in high school, going full time in this business at the age of 17.
We’ve outlasted virtually every other software construction platform of this type in the market and we have a vision for the future that is modern, exciting and relevant.
What Motivates These Changes
As proud as I am of all that we have been able to deliver, which has supported so many of you, unfortunately we have not yet shared fully in the success that we have helped so many of you to create. In very recent history I spent four years sleeping on a mattress on my parents’ floor so that we could preserve as much spending on the platform as possible. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, but I’ll leave the rest for another day. All entrepreneurs make sacrifices and I’m sure that many of you in our community will have similar stories to tell from some point in their past. And of course, I’m ultimately responsible for my own choices and their outcomes and do not regret making these sorts of choices.
I have a few reasons for sharing that story now. Firstly, it is important for you to understand my motivations for doing what I (and many in our team) do. Like most entrepreneurs I of course hope to make it in a reasonably big way one day. However, that is insufficient motivation for the many personal sacrifices I – and other members of the leadership team – have made. What keeps me up at night is ensuring we have a viable platform that supports you, your businesses, your lives. I know many of you personally and ensuring I do not let down the many people that depend on this platform is very important to me. Secondly, I would like you to know that my team, our backers and I have done – and will continue to do – literally anything we can to support this platform and the community. It is not humanly possible to do more. Finally, I would like to correct the record for those of you that think that we are somehow a highly profitable corporation simply attempting to “cash in” with these licensing changes. Instead, we are looking to create a more sustainable model that can rise to today’s changing world.
Make no mistake, the world is changing rapidly. The Classic LiveCode you know and love no longer has the same appeal to new users it once did. While many of our customers have been with us for many years and continue to get amazing value from Classic, no platform can retain all users for all time and new users are essential to maintain long term viability. We must reinvent ourselves.
One of our customers posted on social media that changes create turmoil that is not good for the platform. In my view this is an argument for stagnation and the end of things. Other platforms that do not make such changes perhaps appear to have less turmoil – because they die quietly. We have reinvented ourselves several times over the past 30 years and now must do so again.
Low/code and no-code platforms are popping up everywhere. Yet they have tremendous limitations. Either they take you back into JavaScript or some other equally complex lower-level language if you need to extend them, or you hit the wall once your app gets over a certain level of complexity. A no-code version of LiveCode backed by our wonderful LiveCode Script therefore has the potential to be as exciting, relevant and game changing as Revolution 1.0 was back in the early 2000s. However, the number of things that need to be built-in and matured in such a platform is much more extensive, making the cost structure involved in creating and maintaining such a platform vastly higher. The apps and data also require ongoing cloud hosting which impacts the cost structure for delivering the apps too.
Changing the Business Model
There is clearly something amiss when a business with over two decades of existence and over 47 million end users of its technology is not enjoying a stronger financial performance. Don’t get me wrong, there are aspects of the business that work well. Our services team has done a wonderful job of expanding in recent years to help pay for a lot of the development on Create. Nonetheless the Classic product today delivers tremendous value already without any of the new features or capabilities and we have failed to fairly capture that value.
Our historic model compounds itself by making things like crowd funding a necessary (and seemingly attractive) option to fund future developments to the platform. I am incredibly grateful to those of you that have backed the various campaigns, we could not have come this far without that. However, in future we need to move away from this type of model and make sure our platform delivers sustainable income that supports us through all the technical challenges that the future may bring. Why? Because raising a fixed sum for complex technical projects is incredibly risky and can mis-set expectations in a way that is really damaging to our most loyal customers. A case in point is the Script Compiler project, a true own goal that we have visited on ourselves and those that backed it. It is a gift that just keeps on giving. The project has now ballooned to 5X the original effort estimate and we have already spent the funds raised for it multiple times over. We will still deliver it but it has not been our finest hour and I apologize again unreservedly for this debacle. If you would like an account credit for your backing for it, then please get in touch and we will be happy to supply that. So in all honesty, I would truly like to never run another crowd funding campaign. All of that said, and as seriously as we take this mistake, in reality for most people the Script Compiler is a nice-to-have rather than something that detracts from the overall value you get with the platform overall.
The fundamental reality is that we have anchored the value of the platform and sold it at a level far below the level of value it has delivered to so many of you. Our historic pricing model is a flat fee that does not scale as you become more successful. So a customer receiving $1M added value from us (and I know of such an example, as measured by you!) pays the same as someone with $5K added value. The fact is that when we originally set the pricing strategy I was in my teens or early twenties. And it seemed sensible to follow what others were doing in this space. Once you train your customer base that this is the value of the platform it becomes incredibly hard to change. This business model has proven fatal for most of our competitors who tried and failed to sustain platforms similar to ours.
I believe it may be these expectations from the past that have contributed to making it hard for a small yet important minority of our customer base to understand these changes. For example, one of the objections I received from a well-meaning customer was “these are my apps.” I understand that this customer has worked full time on the apps for years but objectively speaking every app contains a copy of our engine IP which has cost millions of dollars to develop. Our technical team has poured hundreds of thousands of hours of work into making and maintaining the engine your app runs on. We most certainly developed that portion of the app, making it a partnership. It is easy to forget this when you choose to “build a standalone” because we have never made a big thing of it in the past – and that’s on us, not our customers. To receive a return on investment on the new license pricing (assuming an average software developer salary) this customer would need perhaps a 10% improvement in annual productivity vs using a lower level tool. While it does vary from customer to customer, we know LiveCode typically delivers a 60-70% improvement in productivity. This is before we consider the compounding value to each individual user in a business, benefitting from more rapidly deployed apps that meet changing business needs far faster than traditional tools. Note, I’m talking about the value delivered by classic LiveCode here, I’m not even taking into account the additional boost in productivity that Create will be bringing (anecdotally about 10x so far). The story we hear over and over again is that LiveCode delivers what the business needs fast. The value is there, but the expectations we have set over all these years make it hard to see at first glance.
Let me put this another way. I have seen so many of you successfully iterate your revenue models. For example, I recently spoke to a customer who was selling a $40 product in 2007 who is now selling a newer and more developed version in a very targeted way for $5K+. Many successful businesses make these sorts of changes as they learn and grow. Yet it seems harder to make a change like this to a development platform that people depend on (either for their livelihoods or for apps within their business) than for other types of software.
That is part of the reason that we have given you three years notice before we stop maintaining Classic. We are tying the new model to our future technology development and to the introduction of our new platform. It is also why we have introduced and refined various programs to help our existing customers to move forward.
We have also gone to a great deal of trouble to design the new model to cover all the uses within our community, for example to continue to be extremely friendly for those of you creating freeware and educational apps – something that most other no-code platforms do not support.
All business leaders learn and grow as they learn lessons throughout the lifespan of a business. That is if anything, even more true for those of us that started in business at a young age. If ultimately, inertia was to mean we are prevented from applying lessons from the past, then no matter how committed I may be, it is going to have to be time for me to go and do something else. Fortunately, judging by the response from many of our more successful customers there is reason for cautious optimism. A few days ago, we sold a $20K license pack to a longstanding customer, an entrepreneur who has done fabulously well from the platform. He did not so much as blink at the pricing and has indicated it remains good value. Many of you with user packs or application payments at a similar scale have given similar feedback and expressed a willingness to move. If we continue to convert such conversations into sales, along with continuing to convert the majority of our hobbyists and smaller businesses, we will be in a strong position.
Keeping it Simple
Another very important lesson is that licensing needs to be simple. We have just two models, Internal for people building apps within their organization or for use internally within a client organization, or Apps for Sale for those creating apps that have customers of their own. Internal users can be bought as either LiveCode Create Native to deploy to Windows/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android and Server platforms, Livecode Create Cloud to create and deploy to the Web or LiveCode Create Universal which includes both.
When designing the model we looked at whether particular clusters of features were well associated with the value our customers derived. They weren’t. So there is no Pro Features pack, Pro Features are simply included. Nor is there a more fine-grained breakdown of the platform set. We did discover some reasonably consistent difference in value between those that deliver only desktop (Native), or both Native Apps and Web (as well as a big difference in our cost structure). The difference between those delivering on a single desktop platform vs multiple platforms appeared sporadically. There are many major apps running on only a single platform deriving value even greater than some of the multi-platform apps. So cross-platform is a “feature”, like everything else, that is included. The new Cloud, while less popular with existing customers than with new ones, would only complicate the feature set to try to unbundle.
Different users use different features and derive value differently. So we are not changing the product line up to unbundle or complicate the line up beyond the straightforward packages we have already introduced. If you’re not sure how the licensing applies to you, there is a faq here.
What LiveCode Create is and Isn’t
With all the discussion around the new licensing model some of the discussion around LiveCode Create itself may have been buried. We will continue to publish videos and start to publish text-based documentation and more supporting material as quickly as we can.
Create is quite simply the next generation of LiveCode. It continues to run your existing projects. A bit like going from Classic Mac OS 9 to MacOS X,, we’ve modernized it in so many ways. It has been designed to accommodate the needs of 100% of our customer base but also with the needs of a new audience in mind.
There is more information about the feature set here.
Let me take a moment to say what Create is NOT. All the following statements are FALSE:
- Create doesn’t allow you to write scripts – false
- Create requires you to use AI – false
- Create uses an LLM to write your code – false
- The no-code tools can’t be mixed with scripting – false
- It’s not backward compatible – false
- Create requires you to use our cloud – false
- You can’t drag-drop your user interface in Create – false
- Create requires your app to phone home for licensing – false
- Create only runs on the Web – false
- Create doesn’t build native apps – false
- You can’t continue to use the Classic IDE with Create – false
Create does come with a new IDE. I hope you are willing to try it. We do need as much feedback as possible on the product at this stage.
That said, if you truly do not want to learn something new now, we have a Run in Classic Mode within LiveCode Create, which opens the Classic IDE, but with the new features in the Create engines.
Those engines already contain new Windows MediaFoundation playback in the Player object and new multi-platform sound recording. The gap between them and LiveCode 10 is only going to grow. LiveCode Create DP-2 with a raft of new features and fixes will be in August.
Expansion of Support to Help You Move
Throughout this process we have been committed to helping you move to the new model. I appreciate that those of you who have larger Internal license types in particular may be up against budget constraints and not expecting such a large change. It is for that reason that we have expanded our Legacy Customer Create License program in the past few days, for those of you that are having difficulty moving, particularly those of you with more than 10 Internal seats.
We are only expanding this program for existing customers because of the large change in price between what you have been expecting and the new value, not because we do not believe the new value is there. We will not make details of this program public as to do so would be unfair to new customers. If you do not need such support then I would greatly appreciate you not asking for it, as you are essentially negotiating with yourself! All product revenues are going to make LiveCode Create a success at this time.
On hearing about the change to lifetime licenses many of you wrote in to thank us for all the years of value you’ve had and express how satisfied you were that the product lasted as long as it did. A few of you didn’t agree with that, and we changed policy to accommodate you. If you missed that change then please get in touch.
When going into this transition we expected it would not be easy. And it has indeed proven to be one of the hardest transitions we’ve ever had to make. This has not been helped by a small minority of you who have lacked a certain level of decorum in your response to these changes. If you disagree, I invite you to do so politely. Just as you do not need to buy LiveCode, we do not need to sell it to you. Anyone who abuses our team in any way will not be permitted to purchase any product from us in future.
At the end of the day though, I still very much believe in what we are doing and am excited for our future potential. The majority of you have been positive about these changes. I am grateful for that and I thank you for your continued support. I am cautiously optimistic most of you are heading in the right direction now. We will continue to work with the rest of you to get something that can work for both of us. Please get in touch during this transition period, i.e. prior to 22nd August.
In Summary
I am very proud of all the lives and businesses we’ve supported over the years, the many success stories and all the people we’ve helped introduce to the world of coding for the first time. We have seen so many of you go from strength to strength, from startup to exit, from small system developer to enterprise grade solution, from novice to expert. I am looking forward to having a business that continues to deliver and build on that value for all of you with our new platform, while enjoying a broader resource base that allows us to provide an even better and faster service. And having a business that is ultimately perhaps able to share more fully in some of that success we’ve helped so many of you realize.
I know this has been a long letter. I hope this context has been helpful. As ever if we can help in any way please do get in touch. I invite you to join us for this exciting new chapter.
Please get LiveCode Create today and together we can continue to Build Amazing Things for many years to come.
Kevin Miller
Founder and CEO LiveCode Ltd.