SaaS products today are worse than ever

Products are getting worse because it works.

Industry calls it MVP and laugh at anyone not doing it. The experience tells that you have to go fast to the market and validate the idea. But this ultimately leads to inferior products, because the market will validate them.

In other words, if you spend two years developing innovative product that creates it's own niche you are taking too much of market risk. You will likely fail and you will get replaced by people who can spend two weekends on a front-page and generate revenue next month (without too much of a product).

(btw I am not hating the quick go to market group, I am friendly, just a little bit of envious :-) )

I also agree - especially the rapid release lately of 'AI' related SAAS products, which are low effort, low value, low quality hacks were the only purpose is to be one of the first to market and hopefully skim off a few dollars from people before 100 almost exact clones also appear.

Almost none of these will survive.

I agree and I find it depressing. I've been working on an "innovative" project for about a year, with a lot of research (ironically in data science), and seeing those AI projects making money so fast makes me wonder, is that worth it?

Every day, many SaaS products are released, and many of them are just copies of existing products with a few slight changes. It's become more about getting quick money rather than creating a truly innovative and valuable product. The market's oversaturation makes it difficult to differentiate good products from bad ones. It's a shame that the focus has shifted away from solving problems and providing value to customers.

AGREED! Glad someone finally put this into words.

Actually, I think the people that fall into this category DON'T make money. Okay, maybe a few lucky ones do. But when you're adding to a saturated market with a product that is just like everything else, you won't stand out, and you'll fall into obscurity with the millions of other needless SaaS. So, really, your only valid point is that people aren't innovating and that is a bit biased anyway as it will seem that way when everything already appears to have been created already.

I think the innovation is still there; it's just buried under a bunch of 'I built this MVP in 37 minutes and filled out a saas website template' startups. And I think this is causing fatigue for both builders and consumers.

Im more bored by all the new tools named with "ai" where it is not, and "no code" trend.
NoCode trends exist since years (Wordpress,wix,zapier...)

I do get your point, but if you think about it, a product that solves nothing will eventually sink. You can't fake uselessness for long.

This only strengthens the leaders in a space furthermore.

There are definitely a lot of quickly copied products but these most likely won’t last and because of the saturation will have a hard time getting off the ground

I’d separate that from a quick go to market plan and MVP though. You can have a quality MVP and iterate off that

To me releasing early hedges against never releasing. Get it out there, iterate and bring others along for the ride

The saturation of the market with copycat products makes it difficult for truly innovative products to stand out and succeed.

I also agree

While I agree there seems to be a rise in the type of people who just want to make a quick buck by launching any old SaaS (copied, crappy, whatever). On the whole, I think your article is unfair to most of us trying to build good, valuable software. Personally, I have a passion for what I do and am trying to build a community, and no my product may not be the biggest innovation out there, but that doesn't make it bad.