Capiche

Have you thought about collecting reviews from "real" users of the products to supplement your analysis? There's potentially a misaligned-incentives problem with review sites which themselves do the reviews. The latest episode of the FYI podcast[0] goes through this problem with the founder of Capiche[1] (looks like a competitor of yours) and the founder was explaining how firms like Gartner basically have two sets of customers: The software buys and the software sellers. The software sellers can actually pay Gartner to get in front of an analyst and sell them on their product. I don't know to what extent this makes Gartner's recommendations less useful, but it seems like it would make it hard for smaller companies to get on the radar. I think the fundamental problem is that the analysts are not actual users of the software. So I like Capiche's direction, but I dislike the fact that they're a "closed" invite-only website. [0] https://twitter.com/ARKInvest/status/1261421627717218305 [1] https://capiche.com

Followup here: I double-checked with some others who publish with Substack, and [you can export your Substack subscribers](https://capiche.com/q/what-did-you-use-to-start-a-paid-newsletter#a640… At least that keeps the lockdown a bit lower (though of course you would have to get subscribers to pay again at a new site, which would likely lead to high levels of churn).

I agree with you. I subscribe to @Patio11's philosophy of "charge more". But, I think there's a massive amount of opacity and sneakiness in SaaS pricing. If you read Postman's announcement post yesterday, you easily could've walked away expecting just a 50% price increase when in reality you may have been getting bumped from $8/user/mo. to $24/user/mo. because of the new rate limits. Companies should charge more, but they should defend the merits of those decisions, not try to slip them under the rug. Edit: also, I'm not sure your claim that software is getting less expensive holds up. I can say for sure that business software has significantly outpaced inflation in its price increases, but our research on this didn't cover consumer: https://capiche.com/e/software-inflation-rate

The core discussion here is: "how much should the computer adapt to the user vs how much should the user adapt to the computer". On the one hand, the benefit of customizing a system for yourself should be obvious. On the other hand, adapting yourself to a system also means adapting to other people. This allows improving the shared understanding of how computers should be used: - Designs can push users to more efficient workflows. - New features, use-cases and apps can be developed based on shared assumptions. - Other developers can integrate with or expand on the existing designs. eg: MacOS launchers [1] build on various system features. In IntelliJ, I regularly discover new functionality that I wouldn't even know existed had I used a text editor with extensions. Customise your system too much, and you cut yourself off from this "conversation". Perhaps this is why some users still live in heavily customised terminal environments, despite massive improvements to GUIs [2]. [1] Raycast, Alfred, Launchbar [2] https://capiche.com/e/consumer-dev-tools-command-palette

> So, expand your horizons: look at the construction industry, the dentist industry, the fishing industry, the graveyard management industry, the gym pool management industry (these are not made up, by the way). > But let’s reiterate the big advantage you get from considering building a product in an industry outside of yours (software development): It’s just now you’re going to be operating in an industry which has software problems and isn’t particularly optimized to solve them. Be careful about this. There is money to be made in those industries, and they might not have as much competition as software for software companies do. But do you really want to be in those industries? Would you enjoy going to industry-specific conferences and mingling with those folks? If your business gets even a modicum of success, you will be working on it for several years to come. Market/founder fit is something that isn't talked enough: who you choose to serve matters. What good is your business if you feel trapped inside it? So the next time you set out to build a business, do yourself a favor and think about this from the beginning. Relevant thread: https://capiche.com/q/looking-back-would-you-have-done-anything-differ…

Patrick is obviously smart, but I'm struck by how he's also a pompous know it all. Just look at his answer to someone asking about buying a house with a credit card: https://capiche.com/q/whats-your-vision-of-e-commerce-in-2030-will-peo… The main reason people don't use credit cards to buy houses now is due to the credit limit. Someone rich enough to have a $300,000 credit limit probably doesn't want to buy just a $300K house. However... it's easy to imagine the building or construction industry creating a credit card type product for home builders or renovators backed by a credit line sufficient to buy distressed properties. > Will we see people buy houses online? I mean, clearly yes, we will see that. Will it become dominant to do it without meeting one's counterparty and/or broker? That feels unlikely. Has Patrick ever even bought a house? Some people might think it's nice to meet the buyer/seller, but the only reason you really get together in the same room is to sign a bunch of paperwork at the same time. As patio might say, "there already exists a non-zero amount of lawyers executing real estate deals without the physical presence of the actual buyer and or seller". I see no reason for the trend to dissipate.