pketh

When that happens, companies (especially the VC-backed kind) now need to contrive new and increasingly stick-like reasons for customers to pay again. From made-for-marketing ā€˜featuresā€™ that suck to use IRL, to breaking compatibility with older versions, to spamming you with marketing notifications and embedded ads. Their relationship with customers goes from symbiotic to parasitic.

Pirijan, the creator of Kinopio, is always incredibly thoughtful with his approach to building and his writingā€”this is no exception. Longtime readers will know my distaste for where the economy is going with ā€œventure predation,ā€ and the growth-at-all-costs approach in the tech and financial spaces. As Pirijan notes, it all leads to parasitic relationships. Rather than build the best product that users want to use and pay for, they do their best to look flashy, attract new users, and trap them in their ecosystem.