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Users You Don’t Want

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Re: Users You Don’t Want

#81

Post by nostrademons »

IanCal wrote: post #56
nostrademons wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefits of accessibility are largely PR-related: nobody wants to be the company that makes blind peoples' lives more difficult. There may be ADA-compliance issues as well when you get big enough. That said, accessibility is something you do when you're a big company. When you're a startup, work on making it useful to the easy customers, and then only once you have something that lots of screen-reader people want…

I'm not sure about the US but in the UK what you're suggesting would I think be illegal. You shouldn't make things accessible just when you're a large company, that's a really disappointing approach.

Nobody is going to sue the company they've never heard of. If they have heard of you, you're in a good position to start worrying about things like accessibility/scalability/security.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#82

Post by kayla210 »

ryandrake wrote: post #16

Been through this at medium sized companies struggling to sell. This kind of customer is alluring but poisonous. Company: We sell Product X! Toxic Customer: I don't want Product X, I want Product Y. If you're willing to bolt Product Y onto one of your menus I will pay you this stack of money for it! Company: $$$! Bam! The company just went from being a product company to a custom engineering service. You will have to…

I had to do an international marketing plan for a local business in one of my marketing classes in school, and the local startup my group chose did exactly this. Their products were so spread out across so many different industries, there was no telling where their focus was.

They were also into consulting, so whatever product they thought up for one customer, they started advertising on their website as a finished product. The product we were focusing on exporting to another country had 1 customer...the one that commissioned the product. We actually didn't learn that until halfway into the project, but by that point, we were already leaning towards suggesting that they forget about exporting any product overseas and focus on getting more business in our area.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#83

Post by Lawtonfogle »

blfr wrote: post #64
GuiA wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it's not profitable to do that on its own? The "free market takes care of everything" argument is an idealistic position, not something based in reality.

If it's not profitable then why should Airbnb be the one to subsidize it? Why not the government? Or some charity? Or you? We don't expect anyone who meets a homeless person to offer them a place on their couch. That would be unfair. And an additional incentive to avoid homeless people. We have (well, not everywhere but at least we aim for) a systemic solution. There are homeless shelters for example, sometimes run a…

Why should anyone have to support them at all? It comes down to they and their supporters convinced society we should care about them and we decided those profiting off the majority to be the ones bearing the cost of the minority.

Why do I have to bake a cake for a gay wedding if I do such for straight weddings? Because the people who want that requirement have won the level of support needed to have legal support.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#84

Post by Pinatubo »

mintplant wrote: post #51
Pinatubo wrote: post #14

> Now, what happens if someone with an infant or developmentally challenged teenager signs up? Their needs present an entirely new set of problems, problems that could be solved by a startup but not necessarily by ours. Remember you don’t have to pivot your business because a customer needs something that you don’t offer. Meanwhile on Tumblr: "Startup says they don't want developmentally disabled people as customers.…

> Startup says they don't want developmentally disabled people as customers That's not exactly incorrect, is it? The title of the article is "Users You Don't Want" and the author gives a developmentally disabled person as an example.

No, but it's funny how many people are ignoring the main point of the article to get angry about the hypothetical example.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#85

Post by nulagrithom »

GuiA wrote: post #20

> Now, what happens if someone with an infant or developmentally challenged teenager signs up? Their needs present an entirely new set of problems, problems that could be solved by a startup but not necessarily by ours. Remember you don’t have to pivot your business because a customer needs something that you don’t offer. If you open a restaurant, you bet that there are certain building codes you'll have to follow in…

I thought it was a great example. Reading it made me feel guilty, and it made me want to make accommodations for these people in our theoretical babysitting-as-a-service app.

But that doesn't make it any more feasible, possible, or even safe. We're talking about special needs that will be difficult or impossible for a non-targeted service to adequately meet. It would be better for a different service to specialize in this, as our theoretical service is likely woefully ill-equipped to handle the vetting of caregivers for the developmentally disabled (among other problems outside the original problem domain). I'd even be tempted to argue that attempting to address these problems simply for the sake of soothing guilt and/or avoiding lawsuits would be immoral itself.

Whether or not there should be legislation to cover issues like this is another discussion. (Maybe there should be! If AirBnB manages to kill off hotels in a few spots it would make for some very interesting discussion.) But I don't think this theoretical babysitting app is a good candidate to be targeted by such legislation, and I think it's a little silly to damn this example... There's other help and services out there specifically for the developmentally disabled, and nobody expects every babysitter or daycare to be able to handle the developmentally disabled either. Calm down.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#86

Post by encoderer »

This is great advice, but when a customer is asking for something already on your roadmap, or fits with your product vision, then it can provide an opportunity where a feature can close new business and add equity to the business overall.

At Cronitor, we call this technique the JIT Startup[0]. There are dozens of instances where we've delayed writing code for something until it's actually requested, from boilerplate like PDF invoices to product features like being able to tag something in the UI. We always planned to build them, but working on these things (tertiary to your product) before anybody has even asked for it is a low-leverage use of you time.

[0] https://blog.cronitor.io/the-jit-startup-bb1a13381b0#.2w5dvo...

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#87

Post by wwalser »

GuiA wrote: post #20

> Now, what happens if someone with an infant or developmentally challenged teenager signs up? Their needs present an entirely new set of problems, problems that could be solved by a startup but not necessarily by ours. Remember you don’t have to pivot your business because a customer needs something that you don’t offer. If you open a restaurant, you bet that there are certain building codes you'll have to follow in…

Installing a ramp at the entrance to a building or on the side of a cab is a one time fixed cost. I'm not saying I disagree but I am curious, are these examples of regulations requiring businesses take on significant ongoing costs in order to provide for groups that may otherwise be marginalized?

Examples that spring to mind:

* Businesses required to have someone on staff at all times who can communicate via sign language.

* Daycare companies required to have staff capable of caring for children with physical, sensory or mental disability.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#88

Post by lanius »

amelius wrote: post #63
GuiA wrote: post #20

> Now, what happens if someone with an infant or developmentally challenged teenager signs up? Their needs present an entirely new set of problems, problems that could be solved by a startup but not necessarily by ours. Remember you don’t have to pivot your business because a customer needs something that you don’t offer. If you open a restaurant, you bet that there are certain building codes you'll have to follow in…

It is not just accessibility. It also happens with sizes of clothes. Companies aim for the easy 1-sigma chunk of the bell curve, and ignore a large chunk of statistical "outliers". Or take airline seat space for example, where companies simply assume that people are no taller than 5.5 feet.

Well, at least in the case of high-end fashion brands, companies intentionally only produce slim-fitting/smaller-sized clothing in order to maintain an image of exclusivity.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#89

Post by drwl »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #67
School-Cotton wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taxi companies are not required to cater to handicapped individuals who are restricted to wheelchairs. Actually, yes they are. http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/faq/faq_access_veh.shtml

Not just in NYC, this is an almost universal element of taxi regulation. The city will either require that taxi companies operate a certain number of ramp taxis as a condition of their medallions (thus implicitly subsidizing them off other taxi rides) or directly subsidize operators of ramp taxis. The State of California recently required all of the ride-sharing companies to produce reports on how they "planned" to a…

Uber and Lyft both have ways for physically handicapped people to get a ride (the cars have wheel chair carrying devices attached to them)

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#90

Post by perlgeek »

If you get the same request for a feature over and over again, but you don't want to implement it directly, there are a few things you could do:

* Offer an API for third-party integrations that could implement it

* Come up with affiliates that serve this particular niche

* Realize that your opinions might change, and collect email addresses (and consent) to contact folks again if you ever do implement it

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