Land and expand

Link: https://lobste.rs/s/oznirn/redis_cost_ambition#c_dzrja0Mitchell Hashimoto (founder of HashiCorp, creator of Vagrant and Ghostty) commenting on why software products often lose their core identity and grow irrelevant features: The cost (cognitive, time, risk, money, etc.) of adopting a new thing is significantly higher than expanding an old thing.You see this even without any commercial interests. For example, one I've spoken publicly on is how many programming languages became a least-common-denominator of everything features rather than hold strong to a core identity. And many/most of these have no commercial motive, its just laziness.Commercial interests of course definitely push this though. At a certain points its all about horizontal expansion. Or, in more businessy terms: "land and expand." You have the P&P (pricing/packaging) for land deals that explicitly aim to get someone to use your software, usually lead by a flagship functionality that your product is truly probably…