Companies that provide little value adds are not going to make it in the long run.
There are a lot of companies in the market is doing that at the moment
It's hard to see the value proposition for companies like Wix.com or Squarespace when it's already so easy to create a website these days, and people don't even use websites anymore. Do you remember when was the last time you remembered a domain name? There are exceptions in this space (e.g., Onlyfans) that succeed without a mobile app, but those are few and far between in the consumer apps realm, and for companies to succeed these days it basically means you need to be mobile first, at least from my observation.
Shopify, on the other hand, had the value proposition of helping sellers sell their products. It is very clear what they wanted to do early on when no one else was doing it. The truth is no one cares about your website as long as you can buy the items you really need easily enough with just a few clicks. I suspect that might not be true anymore, but at least it was true when Shopify worked on this online platform business model years ago where online shops were scarce.
And if your value proposition does not matter it will be hard for you to grow (in revenue). And when the risk of you never achieving economy of scale are high then your multiples will not be justifiable at any level that’s higher than zero. But that’s rational because there’s no guarantee that you can survive in a medium to long timeframe.
I had this urge to create this post because I kept seeing sponsored videos on Youtube from a few of the companies I mentioned above, and that screams to me that they're desperate and is running out of things to do. Also, it becomes really annoying that sometimes when I watch the videos that has those services I would just switch to other channels.
No. Sorry to say it will probably not work out for you.
$sqsp $shop $wix $bigc
