Totally agree but the hard part is making sure users feel that value every time they open it. What's your take on how to make that obvious from day one?
I think you are thinking about this wrong. Don't approach a business from a UI and code first attitude. You need to focus on solving a problem well. The other stuff will come once you have paying users.
Take OpenAI as an extreme example. The UI was basically a POS and it was difficult to even navigate to ChatGPT when they launched. It was just such an awesome service that people paid for it and used it. Focus on the business you are creating not the software you are using to deliver the service. Honing a UI can come later.
In a world where code is a disposable commodity, it is the business that matters. What specific problem/service are you trying to provide?
Some things I have paid for:
-ChatGPT
-Amazon Prime
-Genscape/Wood Mckenzie crude oil tracking
-Netflix
-Bloomberg Terminal
-LSEG
-Disney+
-a finance substack
-Cell phone data
Many of these have atrocious interfaces. I pay because they solve real problems in the real world for me.
A common issue among (particularly young entrepreneurs) is thinking, "I want to get into SAAS.", then focusing on some website or UI first.
In a modern world, that is the last thing that matters. What matters is solving a real problem for people.
What is the business you want to create? What is the market? What is the problem you are solving for them. What are you providing people to save them time or money or entertainment etc? That is what matters.
You’ve hit on something that I think deserves to be called out more directly — all of the things you pay for have significant non-software aspects. It is pretty hard to make something people will pay for without tackling some hard problem outside of the software itself, unless your software is very niche.
Looking at your examples
- ChatGPT, you need some way to get an otherworldly sized dataset before you can train a model, and the fact that you also happen to have to write a web interface for the chat looks like a footnote in comparison
- Amazon Prime, have to create a distribution empire
- Crude Oil Tracking, have to get raw data from somewhere, I don’t know the space well but I’d be shocked if they didn’t have some moat around the data source, or they even have a hand in collecting it
- Netflix, you can solve all the hard problems of video streaming and still have nothing people want to watch
- Bloomberg Terminal, this one is maybe the closest to being replicable with just good software? I’m sure building the data sourcing for it would still be the “hard part”
If you broaden your scope from SaaS to “software that makes money” the most obvious are social networks, but then your problem becomes how to actually monetize it, since you more than likely can’t charge the users for it.
Exactly. Wood Mackenzie has insane amounts of data sources: infrared cameras pointed at most storage tanks in North America, cameras counting the movement of rail cars, drones have been flying over tanks measuring roof levels on tanks for years, thermal tracking of crude oil pumping stations, production by field for years, hoards of data they've accumulated over decades and the list goes on. The website/apps are pretty to deliver the service but that isn't what really matters to solving my problem and providing value.
The comment about LLMs writing this is interesting but I think it misses the point. Someone still had to know what to build and why. The assembly knowledge needed to even prompt an LLM correctly for something like this is not trivial. The craft shifted, it did not disappear.
