The Big Picture
Data points and market trends
Marketing: People Are Increasingly Looking for Answers, Not Content.
In my overview of the major trends that SaaS founders should keep an eye on, one significant area to watch in the Go-to-Market strategy is the ongoing evolution of SEO.
Sparktoro recently shared a study revealing that around 60% of all Google searches are “zero-click searches,” meaning they don’t lead to a click on any link.
This implies that the searcher either performs another search directly or stops searching altogether.
One of the key aspects of this trend is Google’s increasing tendency to answer queries directly by extracting content from existing pages and displaying it in their “Featured Snippets” or “People Also Ask” sections.
This partially explains the growing share of zero-click searches: Google serves answers directly on its search results pages, reducing the need for users to visit the websites from which the information is sourced.
What does this mean for founders of B2B software companies?
Firstly, IMO it illustrates a shift in user behavior. People increasingly want direct answers rather than browsing through pages (often cluttered with pop-ups) to find the information they need. If Google increasingly does that, it means that people are reacting well to it.
Secondly, the study shows that Google is sending proportionally less traffic to the open web and more to its own platforms (YouTube, Google Maps, Shopping, etc.).
As always, changes bring both threats and opportunities. And it won’t be different for SaaS startups in terms of lead generation, SEO, and content marketing strategy.
Article of the week
Research and thoughts
Where Have the SaaS Early Adopters Gone?
I recently spoke with founders who had just launched their product on Product Hunt, and one of the topics of discussion was their struggle to find early adopters. I had not thought about it before, but it’s true that it seems that SaaS early adopters have disappeared.
A few years ago, early adopters were crucial for many early-stage startups. They were the ones eager to test and adopt software that was still rough around the edges but had potential. Their early feedback was invaluable to founders. It may seem like a small thing, but having people show interest in your nascent product is incredibly important.
Founders used to find and engage with early adopters on platforms like Product Hunt or HackerNews, newsletters like BetaList, or social media. These were the go-to places. However, today it's become much more challenging to find early adopters for your software.
The Great Early Adopter Burnout
The first reason, I believe, is market maturity and saturation. Early adopters, by definition, are drawn to new and innovative products. SaaS was novel and exciting a decade ago, but now it has become mainstream. Most product innovation is incremental rather than radical, making new products less exciting to test. Early adopters have become bored, even if today's products are more polished. This isn't unique to SaaS— for instance, early adopters of refrigerators were probably enthusiastic at first but I guess there are fewer today 😅.
Secondly, the traditional channels for reaching early adopters have drastically changed. Many of the websites I mentioned have gone mainstream, attracting a much wider audience. They've also adopted algorithmic approaches to product curation which are often manipulated by marketers and founders, reducing authenticity. Additionally, the sheer volume of new products posted daily makes it incredibly hard to stand out (no scarcity anymore).
From Early Adopters to Early Supporters
An interesting point from my conversation with the founders was that the people who helped them the most weren't "product early adopters" but those with whom they built relationships through network introductions or customer discovery interviews.
These individuals became their "early supporters." They didn't follow the founders because they were interested in testing new products but because they wanted to help and support them.
They kept asking for updates, tracking the product's development, and making introductions to potential users. Some even became business angels. And this had a significant impact on the founders' morale.
I think this is key for many early SaaS founders. Instead of searching for early adopters on saturated digital platforms, an alternative is to build bonds with targeted users through interviews and discussions. It doesn't scale, but at that stage, who cares?
Business Breakdown of the Week
Interesting startups and products
What is Motif?
Motif is an AI-first SaaS platform designed to assist web designers by leveraging AI to streamline feature design, prototyping, and converting designs to code. Essentially, it’s like an AI-first Figma.
What I find interesting:
The interesting aspect of Motif is how it demonstrates AI's potential in both automating tasks and reducing the need for human collaboration (as discussed in a previous post).
Task automation: Motif offers various features that save designers time, such as fast duplication, smart replacement, auto layout, and more.
From human collaboration to AI collaboration: The following picture illustrates well how “AI collaboration” could be more efficient than “human collaboration,” in the area of design systems:
And again, I’m not suggesting that AI will eliminate human collaboration in SaaS products, but rather it will reduce unnecessary collaboration, allowing people to focus on higher-quality interactions.
Again, I’m not saying that AI will kill human collaboration in SaaS products, but will rather kill unneeded collaboration so that people can focus on higher quality interactions.
Which gives us our SaaS matrix:
What’s interesting here is that, despite Motif being an AI-first software with the potential to bring radical improvements to customers, its position as a horizontal tool in an established market where most companies and designers are already equipped (a replacement market) presents a challenge for success (hello, Figma and co). Thus, as in many cases, radical improvement alone is not sufficient.