51 notes
Enormous opportunity vertical SaaS. There's a lot of horrible, painful software in boring industries ready to be disrupted.
GeniusThinking@GeniusGTX
Asked what he would build if he started over, Patrick Collison did not name an AI lab.He said he'd go for "the janky 1990s software" running whole industries nobody in the Valley will touch.3 examples of this:1) Vertical SaaS
We're going to reach a point in the next year where software businesses are going to have to completely reinvent themselves from first principles.This will be hard, because both execs and senior ICs are going to have to admit that most of what they know isn't as valuable in this new world.Don't let ego prevent seeing reality. That mistake is more expensive than ever.
I'm unsure about paid credits for SaaS. If a company is using AI, they have a model provider. Maybe it makes sense to still charge a flat subscription and build connectors for those models?
Simple experiences are often the ones that work best in small and mid-market. I think about how dominant @Mailchimp was in email marketing. It was a B2B SaaS tool that felt like a consumer tool.
signüll@signulll
openai traded the simplicity of the chatgpt consumer experience & the option to make simple & easy to use agents for consumers for the ability to compete in the enterprise with work & codex post anthropic just killing it.that is a reasonable trade off but the super app is very complicated & every team will want to stuff things in now for their feature / product etc. add in publicly traded company that will report revenues every quarter which will make iteration more complicated esp on a singular surface.very fun facts if you’re a startup.
@krispuckett Subscriptions are annoying. Not even the cost, but remembering to keep up with them.I don't need cloud storage/sharing. Most of my screenshots are trash after I do anything with it.I'd gladly pay one-time and for upgrades—I give @CleanShot $30 every few years.
Increasingly bullish on vertical software.Existing vendor relationships are a powerful distribution advantage, and agents make deep industry expertise an even stronger wedge.I expect vertical software to start replacing horizontal software in many industries.
Software businesses used to naturally move horizontally across a given function because software was hard and expensive. So you built one tool like a CRM and sold it to everyone.Agents change the entire dynamics. Software is cheap. This means you can build a great business for a narrow market. Industry expertise is the wedge.
There are few products as magical as @airtable. If you're thinking about building a software product, it's an excellent way to model out ideas.
I wish more consumer applications followed @sketch's lead on subscription pricing. People must keep paying for updates and new features, but they can continue using the application.
The amount of things that can be accomplished with @zapier really is amazing.
It's been obvious for the last year that @intercom has been after CRM. It's awesome to see such a great product succeeding—Intercom raises $125M to take on Salesforce
That's a real bummer. RelateIQ / SFIQ was one of my favorite products for a long time.
Andy McLoughlin@Bandrew
And in a move that surprises almost nobody, Salesforce finally announces the formal retirement of SalesforceIQ. This leaves a HUGE gap in the market for SMB and (non-startup) lower mid-market focused CRM companies like Pipedrive, Base and Prosperworks.
I'm not crazy about all the weather apps wanting a $2-3 subscription per year. This seems to be an android thing. I would much rather pay $10 up front and not have to worry about managing subscriptions. @wunderground @DarkSkyApp
It seems like @basecamp constantly produces simple, well-thought out features—To-do Groups
You know, @Dropbox Paper is a pretty good product. It would be really interesting to see what happens to businesses apps if they introduced a hosted email service.
A ton of clever inbound ideas here—How Intercom Generates $50 Million Annual Recurring Revenue
I think subscription businesses create better products. Having to sell every month is a hell of an incentive. buff.ly
Is a SaaS product with an extremely high churn, but an extremely low-cost of acquisition viable? quora.com
Remember that with Software-as-a-Service, the “service” is just as important as the “software.”
If you're looking for NPS surveys, we built a tool that provides 1,000 surveys/mo—for free. Check it out!
A beta customer says, "You have the best data mapping that I've ever seen in any SaaS product." Then takes a screenshot during the session.
Cancellation flows and reducing SaaS cancelations
Ah, the joys of using enterprise software.
Just discovered @fullstory. Love the product. Absolutely an interface designer's best friend.
It's funny, ten years later Slack is inadvertently doing what Ning tried to to, allow people to create their own social networks.
SaaS company websites are beginning to look more and more like consumer ones—The evolution of the SaaS landing page
A self-hosted, open source Slack. I love Slack, but this is a compelling concept for many teams.
"Most enterprise software looks like a cheap 70's prom suit — muted blues and greys everywhere " buff.ly
Five years later user-focused team messaging tool @SlackHQ is turning into everything Ning wanted to be—a build your own social network.
An alternative to "one thing well" is "everything poorly." It works especially well for entrenched enterprise players.
SaaS designers are focusing on rewriting mundane, inefficient, time-wasting tasks—Consumerization of the Enterprise
Sales is really about creating new value for customers.
SaaS businesses can learn a thing or two from Dollar Shave Club
I must read on churn for SaaS businesses.
Buffer dishing out valuable lessons in the SaaS business—The quiet pivot
Whoa, Dropbox for business offers unlimited storage space for $15/user/month.
Free startup idea—someone build an SaaS to compete with Advantage (Agency Software).
The enterprise software conundrum is a likely culprit. End users aren't usually the buyers.
Why enterprise software sucks.
