
Users You Don’t Want - craigcannon
http://themacro.com/articles/2016/08/users-you-dont-want/
======
bsder
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.

Customer--"We want X and we want 100,000 units and we're going to put the NRE
on this payment schedule."

Us--"No, you're going to put all that NRE up front and it's <2-5 million
dollars depending upon change complexity>. And you're going to front the first
10,000 units which is <generally a nice chunk of a million>. _After_ that, we
can put you on the royalty schedule. We can't put ourselves in the position of
losing the company because your volume never materialized."

Customer--"<choke> <splutter> That's preposterous."

Us--"No. It's the reality of hardware. We know our costs _really_ well."

Side comment: it's always 100,000 units and 100,000 units is generally
hardware death--big enough that you have all the volume problems but small
enough that your profit sucks.

~~~
oz
NRE = 'Non-recurring engineering', for those as ignorant as I was.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
recurring_engineering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
recurring_engineering)

~~~
bsder
It could also be "non-recurring expense".

Sometimes things have a "setup charge" that you have to pay once, but then
don't have to pay again.

------
ryandrake
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 drag Product Y along with your product
forever as a big lump of technical debt. After a few repeat iterations of the
above, you will have a franken-product with random features hanging off of all
ends, confusing to general users and impossible to maintain.

If you're a Product X company and one customer wants Product Y, stand your
ground and tell them to go find Product Y somewhere else. If tons of customers
want Product Y, maybe pivot and become a Product Y company and ditch Product
X.

~~~
amelius
But what if selling Product Y allows you to become ramen-profitable?

~~~
geofft
You can

* decide that you want to be an engineering consulting firm that charges only ramen, which will make your customer _very_ happy

* become ramen-profitable on product Y without it taking all your time, build and market product X, then dump your customer and product Y (make sure you don't sign a contract saying that you have to keep supporting product Y)

* say no and find another way to become ramen-profitable

------
nostrademons
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 and fines _anyway_ , and so it didn't
matter that they'd conceived it as a service for rich people, the only way the
could survive was to make it big enough and useful enough to ordinary people
that they could get the laws changed.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54NIcx3HJSE#t=1170](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54NIcx3HJSE#t=1170)

~~~
mwseibel
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 blindly based on a customer request.

~~~
Fordrus
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?"

~~~
wruza
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?

------
CPLX
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.

~~~
rconti
2017 is the year of mobs with pitchforks on the Developer.

~~~
CPLX
The developers might be OK. If I was a VC type though I might be looking over
my shoulder.

------
GuiA
_> 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 order to accommodate e.g. people with disabilities.

Right now, as the article points out, it's not something that most tech
companies have to worry about unless they choose to, but perhaps it should be.

As startups disrupt entire industries with little regard for the existing
legislation, entire niche of users could find themselves marginalized. For
instance, hotels have to build a number of accommodations for people with
mobility problems. Airbnbs don't. What happens to that segment of the
population when/if Airbnb completely kills off hotels in a particular
geographic location?

The web is already hell when it comes to accessibility concerns; and it seems
like tech companies with a foot in the real world are just carrying this trend
over. This is what people mean when they talk about the need for inclusiveness
when designing tech products and companies; otherwise, you're just building a
world where parents of developmentally challenged teenagers are even more
excluded than they already were.

I agree with the core point of the article, but the example chosen to
illustrate it couldn't be worse. Yes, it isn't your responsibility to solve
everything for everyone, but that doesn't mean you can just choose to ignore
the social contract altogether.

~~~
gautamdivgi
This is a good point. Same with Uber. Most Cab companies are required to
provide access to wheelchair bound and disabled members of society at no extra
charge. Not sure if Uber has the same requirement - and if and when it starts
moving cab's out of business it will definitely prove to be a problem.

~~~
afarrell
> Not sure if Uber has the same requirement

It doesn't. I've a friend (who might be popping on this thread here soon)
who's been working with adapt.org on pressuring Uber on this issue.

In theory, ridesharing should be much better for PWD than trying to hail a cab
and cheaper than government services like the MBTA's The Ride. However it very
much does not look like it is the case right now.

~~~
aianus
Uber has wheelchair vehicles at the same price as UberX:
[https://newsroom.uber.com/canada/uberwav/](https://newsroom.uber.com/canada/uberwav/)

~~~
afarrell
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!

~~~
bonniemuffin
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.

------
Pinatubo
> 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."

~~~
mintplant
> 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.

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

------
quwert95
>In the case of Justin.tv, pivoting to serve video gamers was the right move.
Our video game broadcasters always represented a small but consistent group of
users. It tooks us 4-5 years to realize how important they were.

This stuck out at me as an avid Twitch user/follower (and sometimes a
streamer). I think they need to re-realize this.

The pivot result (extra effort and focus in Twitch) is being re-pivoted with
the introduction of more general-content streams, like Creative, Music, and
Social Eating:

[https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Creative](https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Creative)
[https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Music](https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Music)
[https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Social%20Eating](https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Social%20Eating)

And then there are the streams that push the limit:

[https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Poker](https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Poker)
[https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Games%20%2B%20Demos](https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Games%20%2B%20Demos)

I wonder why they didn't say 'No' to the users that these streams provide for,
and revive/rebuild Justin.tv.

Edit: Formatting...?

~~~
dublinben
Does it really matter what the content of the stream is, as long as it is
bringing in viewers? They've built the Twitch brand around games, but it is
also the largest streaming site of any kind.

~~~
quwert95
Kinda, sorta.

I, personally, want it to matter because Twitch's mantra and goals are still
focused around being 'for gamers.' As a user, I feel like the "purity" of the
space has been diluted. I am not alone in this.

From a business perspective, I guess anything goes as long as it gets eyeballs
on ads, people buying bits (Twitch fun bucks), and more channel subscribers
but simultaneously balancing the friction that new features have with the
established userbase.

>but it is also the largest streaming site of any kind.

Youtube Gaming, Afreeca, and many others still exist; hopefully Twitch doesn't
rest on what they have in regards to streaming. Twitch is also no longer just
a streaming site; it's a software and wiki/database company now with the
acquisition of Curse. Curse definitely brings in it's own conversation of
"Users You Don't Want."

Edit: Added Curse stuff.

------
rgbrgb
We definitely experienced this starting Open Listings. We thought that to
begin with we would only be serving the 2/3 of transactions made by
experienced buyers, but it turns out that over half of the buyers we attract
are first timers. In retrospect, this makes sense: our savings is appealing to
young families, and first timers don't have attachments to the status quo of
getting driven around by a realtor in a Cadillac. Rather than saying no, we
embraced these clients and have retooled our product to be more educational
and broadly accessible. It's working so far in terms of ramping up revenue,
staying default alive, and we're stoked to make homebuying more affordable to
people who really need it the most. Our finding is that first time buyers
don't actually need more service but they do need slightly more education and
reassurance, which we try to accomplish mostly through UI and documentation.

------
mwseibel
Hey folks - slightly different piece today - trying to get away from
investor/fundraising posts as of late. Would love your
thoughts/comments/questions. I'll check in a couple times over the course of
the day.

~~~
peterhartree
I enjoyed the piece, thanks Michael.

Sorry for the boring feedback, but the post feels like it needs a bit more
proofreading. Some of the syntax is a little confusing and I noticed a couple
of definite typos:

> So what should to you?

Should be:

> So what should you do?

And:

> Does this user represent an even better opportunity for you to grow your
> business.

Should be:

> Does this user represent an even better opportunity for you to grow your
> business?

~~~
mwseibel
thanks!

------
mapgrep
I feel like this point could have been made without referring to infants and
developmentally disabled teenagers as "hijacker users."

I hate to moralize, but this essay helped me realize that there is, in fact, a
baseline level of humanity we hold one another to in this community. And it is
pretty inhumane to reduce the weakest members of society to mere obstacles to
your business success. Choose another example and you will make your point
more effectively.

~~~
makomk
Oh, I think they're making their point quite effectively, given that this is
how "disruptive" companies like Uber and AirBNB actually operate. You're right
that perhaps a more euphemistic example might've been better PR though.

------
joelthelion
Just don't say no on principle because you read on HN it was cool to do so.

The same goes for saying no to feature requests. Just because it has an
Applesque feel to it doesn't automatically make it right.

------
hacknat
Most startups never make it past their first year, but for those that do I
think this is the biggest problem they encounter. Especially if there's a
sales team, the temptation to say yes to prospective customers is enormous.

A lot of founders get tripped up by needing to show hockey stick growth as
soon as they can, because they're usually top performers that are used to
knocking expectations set on them out of the park. Saying yes to lots of
people is an easy way to show the hockey stick in the first year, but it'll
turn into linear growth pretty quickly. Congratulations you now own a
consulting company, and your product team is groaning under the weight of
enormous technical debt.

Your company is probably going to die now, because you're top engineers
probably hate your product and vision.

I don't blame people though, because there really isn't a full proof way to
avoid this. Sure, anchor customers can help, but how do you know when you
really have anchor customers and when you're just saying "yes" to lots of
ideas? In the end, IMO, it's totally subjective (building a great product).
You just have to have a sense for it and be willing to fail quickly.

In my experience the best founders actually don't take as much signaling, at
least explicitly, from their customers as you would expect. They have a
maniacal vision, and they are following it. Their customer help give form to
the sculpture, but the basic outline is set. If real hockey stick growth
follows, so be it.

------
refrigerator
Related: [https://m.signalvnoise.com/bigger-prices-bigger-
problems-728...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/bigger-prices-bigger-
problems-72820249456f)

------
teddyh
Reminder: Justin.tv announced that they were shutting down and then shut down
_on the same day_. They certainly did not want those users.

[https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2014/08/05.html](https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2014/08/05.html)

------
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...](https://blog.cronitor.io/the-jit-startup-
bb1a13381b0#.2w5dvo4jg)

------
phonon
The is literally what every consulting firm does when they come in.

They create a "Whale" chart, aka "Cumulative Customer Profitability".

See [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-
feat...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-
features/masters-of-illusion-the-great-management-consultancy-
swindle-1788556.html) for a, umm, insider view of it.

and [http://www.magesblog.com/2014/01/whale-charts-visualising-
cu...](http://www.magesblog.com/2014/01/whale-charts-visualising-
customer.html) if you want to see some sample code :-)

------
tywang
Define your right target audiences is always a difficult challenge for
startups. Totally agree with "Remember that being good at customer service
doesn’t mean serving every potential customer."!

------
AndrewKemendo
I think what is missing here for me (and in a lot of these types of posts) is
a discussion of volume.

 _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._

Is he literally saying that someone would be tempted to pivot a product based
on a single instance? Or is that loose language for some, say 1% of the user
base.

------
bluedino
I wish I could apply this to my 'internal customers', aka departments I don't
want to work with.

------
6stringmerc
So a variation of the 80/20 rule? 20% of your users/customers cause 80% of the
headaches/effort that aren't productive? This does hash out some 'stock
characters' like I was "taught to identify" at a certain blue and yellow
colored big box, because we were supposed to target them to "meet their needs"
\- gamer, Mom, audiophile, etc.

I have a few qualms regarding the avenue Justin.tv took as used for an
example, in that yes I'm sure 90% of the user-licenses allow for game
broadcasting - claimed publicly[1] - but IP is a slippery issue and willful
infringement is potentially quite costly. I'm a former gamer so I also have
first-hand experience with, ahem, demands that gamers can sometimes put
forward which may or may not be grounded in the reality of IP law. In other
words, I'm pretty sure they got lucky with right-place-right-time-right-market
which takes some sheen off the innovation, execution, etc type narrative.

[1] [http://www.cnbc.com/2014/08/11/after-twitchs-music-
copyright...](http://www.cnbc.com/2014/08/11/after-twitchs-music-copyright-
crackdown-what-about-games-themselves.html)

------
Animats
That's a good argument against "accessibility". You're probably not getting
significant revenue from the screen-reader people.

~~~
nostrademons
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 to use is
it worth investing time in making it usable.

~~~
IanCal
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.

~~~
riboflava
This is just another reason why the US has a healthier startup culture. There
are a lot of things that take effort to do that US companies can get away with
not doing until forced to by law or the market, or when the opportunity costs
diminish that they do it out of the goodness of the individuals' involved
hearts.

~~~
IanCal
> This is just another reason why the US has a healthier startup culture.

I think we would heavily disagree on the "healthier" status.

~~~
riboflava
Probably. My argument for healthier would mostly be on the second-order
effects of having a better economy that can generate new sources of wealth.
With a step back, until momentum and inertia are all that remain of the US'
current dominance in startups that grow into world-changing companies
providing value to all (including disabled people who benefit from
accessibility), I'm default-skeptical of tinkering with the ecosystem with a
top-down legal approach, especially when the approach is something like
importing laws from countries without such dominance. In a way this is just
"well we've kicked ass this far even though we do [morally reprehensible
thing]", which by itself isn't a great argument, but paired with noticing that
social systems are complex it's enough to give me a lot of pause. Even
something that seems bonehead simple like saying "no more doing [morally
reprehensible thing]" can have unwanted second order effects that end up with
the consequence of a state worse than the previous one that included [morally
reprehensible thing]. Full analysis is required by the people most capable of
seeing all the effects, one of the worst outcomes is some group kicking up a
stir to get some mandate passed on good intentions without thorough analysis.

------
djyaz1200
A version of this problem I've seen is that often customers (particularly
enterprise customers) want you to make solutions specific to their exact needs
rather than the broad needs of their whole category. Even if they want the
same problem addressed that you do they will want you to make the product suit
their needs EXACTLY. That won't scale and backs you into being a services
company instead of a product company. Strategies we've used to fight this are
to listen to feedback from all users and only build what everyone agrees is
needed, and also offer an API so we don't have to flat out say no. Instead
with an API we can say, you're welcome to do whatever you'd like... Finally,
when we do have to say something like "no" instead we just put a astronomical
price tag on it and let the customer decide no for themselves. ...or maybe
they'll say ok and then we'll know our thinking might be flawed if some
feature is worth a hefty premium. Hope that's helpful to others!

------
mbesto
> _In the case of Justin.tv, pivoting to serve video gamers was the right
> move. Our video game broadcasters always represented a small but consistent
> group of users. It tooks us 4-5 years to realize how important they were.
> Serving them didn’t change the costs of the business too much: our major
> costs were salaries and bandwidth and we didn’t care what video was being
> streamed as long as people were watching and chatting. Also it opened up
> monetization avenues that were very interesting: online video advertisers
> would prefer to advertise against video gameplay than general UGC content._

It also happens that UGC pertaining to video games is a huge category of
content on YT and represents a very lucrative audience (25 year old males with
disposable income): [http://www.tubefilter.com/2014/12/19/15-percent-youtube-
vide...](http://www.tubefilter.com/2014/12/19/15-percent-youtube-videos-video-
game/)

------
_andromeda_
As for me, it often comes down to a question of who needs who. If a client
provides more value than you could possibly anticipate in the foreseeable
future and as long as it isn't too depleting(and only you can determine this
and only for a limited period), then you should oblige. It's easy to say, say
no, but when times are tough you should trust yourself when coming to a
conclusion on such an issue since there aren't any unbendable rules after all.

------
cpkpad
... Only one of the cases he listed, the developmentally-challenged kid, would
result in a lawsuit if he didn't accommodate.

That's one where you throw money at the problem. You hire a custom operator to
handle ADA-requests (and similar) and you pay the price difference for someone
who does manage this. Legal compliance issues, you often turn into a mega-
expensive non-engineering one-offs.

Or you get slapped with a DoJ investigation, and lose the business.

------
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

------
tapeleg
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.

~~~
convolvatron
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.

------
linkmotif
the bob dylan line "it's only people's games that you've got to dodge" comes
to mind.

------
jcoffland
And what if I want only Nigerian princes because they have the most money?

