Adoptability and the need for new software paradigms

Adoptability = the willingness and ability of a customer to adopt a new tool.

You would think that the existence of a pain in a target industry and the proposition of relevant value from software vendors would equate to adoption. But that’s not necessarily the case. Which is counter intuitive to many founders but is still very true.

Oftentimes during the ideation/validation phase, we find out about a significant pain in the market. As founders, we start thinking there are no available solutions out there and that this is why the pain remains. We then do our research and find out there are in fact many solutions in existence. Why then, aren’t these solutions being adopted?

Many reasons, among them -

1. Too many SaaS solutions already being adopted

2. Heavy data migrations needed for initial value

3. Lots of integrations needed for initial value

4. Lack of tech proficiency from potential users

5. Nice-to-have but not critical enough to exhort energy on by the implementor

6. Cumbersome solutions

The SaaS phenomenon started as a solution for better adoptability, among other motivators. But it is evident in the past 3-4 years that buyers are fed up with more and more SaaS solutions being offered in new/existing categories.

The no/low-code phenomenon was supposed to improve adoptability by decreasing the barrier to entry from the implementation/configuration angle. It only worked in several verticals.

One of the biggest attractions behind the (still mostly hypothetical) autonomous AI agents wave (a very ambiguous term) is their potential ability to bridge many adoptability-related gaps. An intelligent software component that can avoid many of the above obstacles -

1. No need to open a new tab in the browser (aka SaaS saturation)

2. Ability for self-configuration (aka no need for low/no-code proficiency)

3. Ability to independently create new software integrations

4. Flexibility in new data format digesting

5. Autonomous operations without complex user adoption needed

If (and it’s a very big if) AI agents would indeed represent a viable autonomous product approach and if founders will find a niche where these agents can provide value already in the next 2 years, their ease of adoption will be a key factor in their ultimate success, managing to deliver value where there is either SaaS saturation or to new groups of users that weren’t tech proficient enough to adopt no/low code based solutions beforehand (on top of other competitive advantages).