Software and behaviour change
"We have product market fit. People are paying for our software and we're growing." Not quite.
Great software changes the way you do something. Whether in the office, at home or in a social setting. WhatsApp has changed the way I communicate. Wise has changed the way I send money. Spotify changed the way I consume audio content (and lots of it - ❤️ podcasts). Hell, MyFitnessPal has changed the way I consume food, and for that, I hate it and love it at the same time but it has changed my behaviour, fundamentally for the better. Even social media, for its flaws, has changed how we interact with each other, how we consume (news / trends / knowledge etc.), and how we express ourselves.
The moment something becomes embedded in our daily workflow or habits, the harder it is to rip out because our working behaviour has adapted to it. Yet not all great software is created equal, or so it seems. Take the Bloomberg terminal at ~$25k a year seat and some +350k users. Till this day, it reminds me of Teletext. But they did the dirty work of aggregating the world's financial data, building products around it and importantly of all and sometimes glossed over, created community features (like chat and classifieds), before community was a thing, in products to drive loyalty. Outside of a deep product set and access to vast amounts of data, many people say Bloomberg chat is their way of communicating in the market. It's how they're wired to communicate. "Get into work, log into BB and catch up on what the market has been up to in Asia and start to message the traders that I deal with." Despite what most modern software users, by big tech standards, would consider a terrible UI, Bloomberg wouldn't have it any other way.
Competitors have tried. Eikon has tried. FactSet has tried. They have both found their own use cases in the finance sector and built strong businesses and brands but they won't eat the Bloomberg terminal's lunch. All this is to say that for me, great software is about changing behaviour. Not just SaaS napkin metrics or rule of thumbs. The experience, the time to value, the feels. Yes, the feels. So when I look at software, whether I'm looking to personally use it or I'm investing in it, I'm asking my self "can this change the way the user does something" and by that, can it change their behaviour. Can it outlast a trial, a heavily discounted subscription, a price increase, or annual budget cycles.