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Users You Don’t Want

themacro.com

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Re: Users You Don’t Want

#141

Post by geofft »

blfr wrote: post #128
geofft wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that argument not apply to "It's 1960, and I don't want to seat black customers at my fancy restaurant because it's statistically likely to be less profitable than seating white customers"?

Because black customers pay the same prices and do not require additional accommodations. It would apply if the restaurateur was required to maintain separate dining rooms for whites and blacks or additional water fountains.

Everyone pays the same prices for what they order, but they can choose to order more or less expensive foods, more or less expensive wines (or none at all), etc., and they can tip differently.

If you have more customers trying to make reservations than tables to seat them, it is economically rational to seat the customers most likely to buy your more expensive items. We decided (correctly, IMO) that it is more important for society to fight entrenched racism than to enable business owners to make that particular locally-rational economic decision.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#142

Post by convolvatron »

tapeleg wrote: post #60

I think this article only makes sense in the context of the bad example given. An actual good idea for a startup wouldn't have such an obvious "hijacker" subset of consumers that just destroy your business.

here's a few that come to mind

   o the US govt will have a laundry list of features so 
     specialized that you really end up working just for them

   o companies that are big enough they want everything
     running on their internal infrastructure

   o health care providers with hippa requirements

   o nation states (including the US) that want to impose
     monitoring or censorship requirements for you to serve
     their populations 

   o customers who want their children to use your service 
     or software and have you be responsible for censorship,
     controlling harassers, etc

   o any minority community, say classic music lovers want
     you to accommodate additional metadata that doesn't
     show up in a service targeting popular music
basically any time you have a feature request you need to think about the ongoing cost vs reward. if you let sales drive this process you can easily end up chasing your tail just to land them their commissions.

i don't think its that unusual. you have to say no sometimes.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#143

Post by Fordrus »

mwseibel wrote: post #11
nostrademons wrote: post #7

The "Uber for babysitters" example is interesting, because Uber's current $50B+ business is exactly the "users they didn't want". They started out as a black car service, where rich people (and it was envisioned only as a service for rich people) could hail a limo, completely legally. And according to this video [1], the reason they moved down-market into "ridesharing for everyone" was because they were getting C&Ds…

I totally agree with you that often times your first set of users aren't the users you end up serving at scale. There are so many examples of this that they are hard to count. What is great about your example is that Uber made a strategic decision to open up to a new user base. Pivoting and serving new users/usecases is totally okay. Where startups get in trouble is when they move from niche usecase to niche usecase…

What I think the parent poster is saying is that in hindsight, you can easily say which customers you were right to pivot for and which your were wrong to pivot for, but going in from the front no one, and I mean NO ONE can actually, really tell which customers are weird customization cases and which customers are revenue-bridges that will lead you to better market fit.

There are always obvious cases in this mind of thing, but the larger point is that we could easily have been looking at an alternative history where Uber was on the scrap heap, and we would all stand here, wagging our beards, berating them for "moving from niche use-case to niche use-case" instead of doubling down and building something of long-term use and value, of executing on their vision. Instead, we're saying that Uber was an instance of a GOOD pivot, but at Uber, at the time it was happening, anyone could've made the argument, "Hey, aren't we just filling a really niche use-case here, of regular people who are willing to trust their lives to unlicensed strangers for a ride?"

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#144

Post by bonniemuffin »

afarrell wrote: post #102
aianus wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber has wheelchair vehicles at the same price as UberX: https://newsroom.uber.com/canada/uberwav/

Oh wait they are rolling that out? I had thought they were just doing a perfunctory trial run in philly that they then cancelled. Huzzah!

A new "Access" option containing UberWAV appeared in my Uber app today in san francisco, with a popup telling me about it. So I guess it just rolled out to SF.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#145

Post by warfangle »

ixtli wrote: post #97
bsder wrote: post #79

Hmmmm. It probably depends upon how much money were talking. If the customer is throwing around a couple million dollars of NRE, it's probably worth bolting something on and pocketing the money. If the customer is only moving a couple hundred thousand, it's probably not. This seems more like a software-only startup issue. We have hardware and have these hard-nosed discussions all the time--generally about volume. Cus…

The equivalent definitely exists in a software-only startup with enough users. In practice it's rarely the case that it's _one_ user, but that there are cohorts of users that want a certain thing you don't provide. I still agree with your point, though, that if those cohorts aren't gonna give you enough money you shouldn't let your development process get sidetracked by their desires.

Unless you're in enterprise software.

It's really easy for enterprise companies to get in the trap of making every customer a spacial snowflake, because they need to to get a half mil contract signed. And then the product becomes sorta shapeless, because each customer gets their own product... And you end up a consultancy instead of the platform/SaaS that you originally envisioned.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#146

Post by madgar »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #103
amelius wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, except with airline seat space, the 1-sigma chunk of the bell curve is outside what (comfortably) fits.

I'm not sure if you're arguing about data or personal comfort. Over half the adult human population is 5.5 feet or under if you recall that women exist and are half the people

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#147

Post by wruza »

Fordrus wrote: post #143
mwseibel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with you that often times your first set of users aren't the users you end up serving at scale. There are so many examples of this that they are hard to count. What is great about your example is that Uber made a strategic decision to open up to a new user base. Pivoting and serving new users/usecases is totally okay. Where startups get in trouble is when they move from niche usecase to niche usecase…

What I think the parent poster is saying is that in hindsight, you can easily say which customers you were right to pivot for and which your were wrong to pivot for, but going in from the front no one, and I mean NO ONE can actually, really tell which customers are weird customization cases and which customers are revenue-bridges that will lead you to better market fit. There are always obvious cases in this mind of…

Yeah, what scares my reasoning in such discussions is that anyone can be simply under survivorship bias of the other company. How does one extract the real truth from here?

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#148

Post by robbyt »

oz wrote: post #132
bsder wrote: post #79

Hmmmm. It probably depends upon how much money were talking. If the customer is throwing around a couple million dollars of NRE, it's probably worth bolting something on and pocketing the money. If the customer is only moving a couple hundred thousand, it's probably not. This seems more like a software-only startup issue. We have hardware and have these hard-nosed discussions all the time--generally about volume. Cus…

NRE = 'Non-recurring engineering', for those as ignorant as I was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-recurring_engineering

In hardware, I know NRE as non reoccurring expense.

Manufacturing companies charge setup fees for programming assembly machines, ordering silk screens, tooling, etc.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#149

Post by wruza »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #104
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Circular reasoning.

Isn't it the way society works?

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#150

Post by WWLink »

CPLX wrote: post #50

Posting an article called "users you don't want" and then using a developmentally challenged teenager as the example of a user that you don't want is so spectacularly tone-deaf that I am left somewhat speechless. I keep thinking this will be the year that the valley types wake up and realize this kind of mentality puts them in existential danger from mobs with pitchforks, but it keeps not happening.

To me it screams "shrewd business person wants the easy money and wants to easily cherry pick their customers."

The thing is, you can say "We can't afford to offer babysitters that are qualified to take care of people with mental disabilities." Say it apologetically on your website or in a questionnaire for new users or something. Don't go bragging about how shrewd you are because you only target the easy, cheap customers.

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