SaaS means much software has become a commodity product, like shoes. You can still hit one out of the park by selling 'shoes' however, literally and figuratively.

One of the reasons Zappos did so well was because they took commodity (shoes) + software (online store) + CS (where CS = customer service, not compsci) = purchase.

Most tech markets now are trading commodity products; even content is a commodity.

But you can still overcome the commoditization issues by finding something else to sell that's hyperspecialized - and some of the most interesting e-commerce marketplaces of the last decade scale precisely *because they commoditize long-tail items and create a barter platform that lets those locked out of the speciality markets participate in the trading.

Empowering individual sellers in a commodity market, aka 'normals' seems like it was a relatively efficient mechanism for growth in the last boom. Examples = information/ads (Google), long tail book purchasing (Amazon), and distributed social interactions (Facebook).

The more interesting question: are we seeing a return of selling to geeks, aka hyperspecialization?