"Then I had a question I needed to ask. Something unrelated to images. And without thinking, I switched back to Claude. Not because Claude is objectively better at everything-honestly, I have no idea how the benchmarks shake out this week. I switched because I *know* Claude. I trust how it thinks. I'm comfortable with its voice. Going back to Gemini felt like visiting a stranger's house when I could just walk into my own living room."
"In 2006, John Gournville published a paper in Harvard Business Review called " Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers " that should be required reading for every AI founder. His core finding: to get users to switch products, your new thing has to be *nine times better* than what they already use. Not twice as good. Not "demonstrably superior." Nine times."
A user favored a familiar assistant over a new, impressive image generator because familiarity, trust, and a comfortable voice outweighed incremental improvements. The 9x problem explains why: users overvalue current tools by about threefold and companies overvalue their new offerings by about threefold, creating a ninefold barrier to switching. Benchmark improvements and small percentage gains rarely overcome that barrier. Historical examples show product winners often succeed by offering comfort and ease rather than purely superior technical metrics. Effective product adoption requires addressing habit, trust, and perceived control, not only performance deltas.
Read at Eleganthack
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