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Developers Will Pay For Sandboxes

Developers and AI-native companies will pay for managed sandbox infrastructure rather than building their own.

The Assumption

Given that agents need sandboxes (separate assumption), the question is whether developers will pay for a managed solution or build in-house.

We’re betting that the operational complexity of sandboxing—scaling, multi-tenancy, capability management, cold starts, state persistence—makes managed solutions worthwhile. Just as developers pay for managed databases rather than running Postgres themselves, they’ll pay for managed sandboxes.

The alternative hypothesis: sandboxing is “too simple” to outsource. Developers will containerise their own solutions using Docker, Firecracker, or basic VM isolation. If true, the market is much smaller—only enterprises with sophisticated needs would pay.

Evidence

Build vs. buy signals:

  • E2B, Modal gaining traction with managed compute for AI
  • Developers consistently underestimate operational complexity until they hit scale
  • Cloud functions (Lambda, Cloudflare Workers) succeeded despite “just run containers yourself” being possible

Price sensitivity data:

  • E2B charging $0.005/min for sandboxes—developers paying without complaint
  • Modal’s compute pricing accepted by AI developers
  • Cloud functions have proven developers will pay premium for convenience

Counter-signals:

  • Many early-stage startups just run agents on their own infra
  • Open source containerisation tools are mature and well-documented
  • Some developers pride themselves on not paying for “wrapper” services

Counter-Evidence

What would prove this wrong:

  • Customers consistently build in-house when offered our solution
  • Open source sandbox solutions become adequate for production use
  • Price sensitivity prevents viable unit economics (developers won’t pay enough to cover our costs)
  • The “just use Docker” approach proves sufficient for 90%+ of use cases

Impact If Wrong

Products affected: SmartBoxes entirely

Revenue model impact: If developers won’t pay, we’d need to:

  • Pivot to enterprise-only (longer sales cycles, different GTM)
  • Find a different value prop (not isolation, maybe observability/debugging)
  • Bundle sandboxing free with a paid product

Unit economics: At our target price ($50-200/month for active users), we need 150+ paying customers for sustainable MRR. If the market is 10x smaller, the business doesn’t work.

Testing Plan

Minimum viable test:

  1. Pricing page experiment: Show pricing before signup, track conversion
  2. Customer interviews: Ask about current solutions, pain points, willingness to pay
  3. Competitive analysis: How are E2B, Modal customers behaving?

Key questions to answer:

  • What’s the maximum developers will pay for sandboxing?
  • At what scale does build-in-house become more attractive?
  • What features justify premium pricing (persistence, snapshots, capability scoping)?

Timeline: Validate within first 3 months of beta

Kill criteria: If 0/10 early users convert to paid AND pricing experiments show under 1% conversion, revisit pricing model or pivot.

Depends on:

Enables:

Validated by milestones:

Assumption

Developers and AI-native companies will pay for managed sandbox infrastructure rather than building their own.

Depends On

This assumption only matters if these are true:

Enables

If this assumption is true, these become relevant:

How To Test

Pricing experiments; competitor analysis; customer interviews on build vs. buy decisions.

Validation Criteria

This assumption is validated if:

  • 3+ paying customers at target price point
  • Build vs. buy analysis favours managed solution
  • Churn rate under 5% monthly

Invalidation Criteria

This assumption is invalidated if:

  • Customers consistently build in-house
  • Open source solutions adequate
  • Price sensitivity prevents viable unit economics

Dependent Products

If this assumption is wrong, these products are affected:

Dependent Milestones

If this assumption is wrong, these milestones are affected:

Decisions Depending On This