Disrupt your service by turning it into a product

One person did this successfully. His name is Matthew (Dmitriy) Kuzmin, the founder of Bleakers.co. Here's his post and how he did it:

After analyzing hundreds of apps, I reached a conclusion that’s hard to dispute. The current market requires products. Investors prefer products over services because they are more scalable for further growth. Customers prefer products because they want something original and unique, which can make their lives easier.

It might be helpful right now to have this knowledge if you're just starting a business. Here are a couple examples to prove my point:

Coffee/restaurant app. Blank Street Coffee shops outgrow their competition, but their value lies not in coffee. This brand decided to heal the coffee culture by automating almost every process, except service. @MaxKlymenko says "They hire nice people" because their system allows anyone to operate their machines. Their product isn't coffee you order through an app. It's the interaction between customers and baristas.

Taxi. Uber hasn't fundamentally changed taxi hiring. Before Uber you would also figure out the destination and the cost, but it's easier if someone does it for you.

Travel. In the past, it took days to organize a trip, or you could hire an agency to do it for you. Now, anyone can do it using Booking and Tripadvisor, not to mention AirBnB.

Banking. Every operation that requires you to be present in the bank nowadays can be done in-app with banks like Revolut.

Retail. Currently you don’t need to go to the shop and choose something in there. Right now you can go to online websites like Amazon. You don’t need to interact with another person directly and you can find the best deals in the whole country from your chair.

Food delivery. For now, you don’t even need to be in a crowd in a local hypermarket and you can simply outsource it to someone else. InstaCart is a simple example of the service that was able to be created in our digital age.

Musical services. Before, in order to get music you had to download it from the computer or even buy it from the local shop. Right now with Spotify you don’t need to get anywhere besides your phone and simply get any track you want in a matter of seconds.

Sharing economy. This is another class of service that will be able to exist in our digital age. Before, you had to go to the local company and sign a really long agreement with a lot of details and it took a lot of time to complete this process. With simple apps like SIXT or other sharing apps (like Lime) we can do it in a matter of seconds from any part of the city.

All of these PRODUCTS are just rebranded services, which automate part of the flow. You won't even think about calling a taxi company when there is Uber. With AirBnB, you won't even need to think about finding a rental agency. Maybe your next product based on your service is exactly what the market needs!

A short list of what you might get from this path:

1. Flow Optimization - even if you have a consultancy, a simple chat bot with information about your company may answer important questions and even convert your customers

2. Staff expenses - some processes may be eliminated by AI.

3. Additional income source - you may think of some small product which is available for everyone and brings you stable income.

4. Media attention and community visibility - with the right marketing materials you can get new customers and new attention.

5. Marketing attention - it's difficult to promote some travel agency, but it's much easier to promote a revolutionary travel app. It's that simple.

IT services can use this concept too. There are many companies like turing.com and even A.team, that basically offer high-quality outstaffing services. Upwork itself managed to take the simple concept of connecting freelancers and automate it on a high level.

One thing that these products change is the way how they communicate with the final user, making it much easier and faster to make any stuff decision you need.

This philosophy was a foundation of Bleakers.co, as a digital agency, and any product of our customers. We use basic methods with a high-quality approach to provide great services to our customers and help them crack the code of product development.

Moving from an agency service to the platform allowed me to launch on Product Hunt. I got 700 upvotes and was chosen as the #3 product of the day. As a result, I generated $20k+ in a day as well as scheduled 20 meetings with potential customers.

To conclude, if you think all these applications have already taken over the market you can't be more wrong. There are still hundreds of potential ideas which are waiting for their chance to be launched and use all the benefits you can get. Use all benefits you got with the current age of progress, like AI and a whole offshore market and create your own unicorn.