The Elimination Strategy – Why More Makes Your SaaS Worth Less
slimsaas.com
slimsaas.com
> Amazon eliminated:
> Store visits (shop from home)
> Product hunting (search + recommendations)
> Price research (automatic price matching)
> Return trips (free home pickup)
> Shipping decisions (Prime = 2-day default)
I don't think any of this is true about amazon in 2024 except maybe "store visits". Product hunting on amazon is hard, there are always variations of the same product at different prices, they don't have free home pickup for at least most returns, and they often have options for same day shipping which aren't free unless you hit a minimum.
Also amazon shopping isn't Saas in the first place, and reducing friction compared to what a user would have to put up with without a service and adding features aren't mutually exclusive so the idea that amazon succeeded by reducing friction doesn't mean that less is more or anything, and I'm not sure there is actually a meaningful difference between what this article is proposing and how people would normally set out to build a SaaS except in that you should probably be sure that any features you add are reducing friction for your users, which is probably reasonable but fairly obvious.
One step on my quitting Prime journey was contacting AMZN about an obviously fraudulent product listing and them telling me they didn't want to hear any complaints about a product listing unless I'd bought the product.
More often than not, I end up on Amazon product pages by way of The Wirecutter or other product review sites.
It wouldn’t be so bad if you actually could filter out slop, but no!
Search results show random crap with no relation to search terms and even changing the display order changes what products you see!
It all feels very intentional and a prime example of enshittification.
https://us.kandaovr.com/products/qoocam-3-ultra
It is such a breath of fresh air to find actual product manuals on the web site compared to snooty Italian tripod vendors whose web sites have nothing but warnings about how they’ll never support you if you bought your product from the wrong vendor.
I can't remember the name of the company offhand, but there's a big Chinese OEM that makes soft cases for guitars on behalf of many of the big international brands. They sell some first-party stuff, and it's high quality and super affordable.
> Gas stations (home charging)
> Oil changes (no engine)
> Dealerships (direct sales)
> Annual maintenance (software updates)
> Price negotiations (fixed pricing)
Excuse me?
Software updates cannot replace maintenance for mechanical wear and tear. No one is sending out over the air updates that rotate your tires.
You are correct that mechanical wear and tear cannot be fully eliminated. No one can OTA a new set of wiper blades.
But the amount of control that software has over a car absolutely can shrink the basket of maintenance that needs to be performed.
Similar rhetoric could be applied to most maintenance. Summer/winter tyres? We'll just adjust the tyre pressure and handling characteristics in software! Battery replacement? We'll just optimize the charging curve in software! Brake pads? Software adjusted braking force and regenerative braking!
The idea that software can solve everything comes from people who've only ever worked on software, get paid to work on software, and get paid speculatively to work on ideas that haven't been proven to work.
The rubber composition, and tread patterning, on snow tires are categorically different from summer tires and adjusting pressure and whatever "handling characteristics" are won't give you the same level of control in snow.
Plus the tires wear down entirely eventually.
For the 12v battery, theoretically an EV could pulse-recondition an underperforming 12v battery, though I doubt any currently do.
There's a big difference between someone thinking software can solve everything, and pointing out that software has already solved some things, and the opportunity exists for it to solve more.
At least twice I canceled and went for public transport.
Other times it is well app saying I will be on destination in 20 mins yeah if a driver is just around corner otherwise it is rather random up to 40mins of waiting easily.
Of course you cannot cheat physics so it is not Uber fault but saying it eliminates pickup uncertainty is a stretch.
Being picked up in 40mins for me is a lot of times same as not being picked up at all. Especially if I could walk to public transport and in those 40 mins be where I needed.
Amazon is an infinite cornucopia of worthless shit. A good shop is one that offers a variety of products in each category, where each has been selected by someone who knows enough about those products for me to be confident that buying the cheapest option will still be a good buy. Also, waiting for delivery is more friction for me than walking to the shop.
Tesla has a design philosophy that I fundamentally disagree with, which introduces friction into operating the car. I have no off-street parking, so an electric car is less convenient for me than a petrol one. Maintenance in the form of physical objects ensures that I have control over what features my car offers.
Netflix provides less variety for me than the old video rental places did. Having all of the tapes lined up made it easier to browse for an unexpected gem than the standard streaming site menus. Producers not being obsessed with metrics meant that series were made to their natural conclusions.
Physical input controls provide a better interaction with devices (consider the obsession with mechanical keyboards). Thanks to integrated cameras, people go to concerts and watch them through their phone screens rather than enjoying the actual performance.
Traditional taxi services (at least where I'm from) offered varying levels of service quality through easily-identified and well-known brands. Government regulation ensured passenger safety and made sure drivers were able to make a living.
Spotify - see Netflix.
When books were only published on dead trees, the cost of doing so ensured that whole teams of people were employed to ensure that what was published was of a reasonable quality and, in the case of non-fiction works, accurate. Now bullshit and humanity's greatest works sit side-by-side with little to indicate which is which.
I don't want to be that person going on about how things were better in 'the good old days', but an awful lot of people simply can't cope without all the guardrails that the pre-Internet businesses imposed on the market. Sure, I can successfully navigate the complexity, and can even thrive in it, but I live in a society, which means that I end up paying for other people's incapability somewhere.
Interestingly, all of them became the anti-thesis of the article in the end.