Frictionless

February 24, 2020
Every successful start-up has helped reduce the “friction,” or inconvenience, of day-to-day life, asserts Lemieux (The Finer Things), founder of The Inside, a home furnishing company, in her snappy but thin survey. Lemieux interviewed more than six dozen entrepreneurs and found each one, in one way or another, trying to reduce inconvenience—whether in pharmacy prescriptions, shaving kits, customized hair care, or office rentals. She warns that in modern business being frictionless isn’t just advantageous, it’s necessary—digital natives won’t bother with products that are anything less. Less time spent on using a good or service means more to spend on family, friends, or oneself, Lemieux writes, and, based on interactions with her own millennial workforce, she believes “found time” is important for younger generations. While Lemieux’s tone is refreshingly salty—millennial workers are “taking back their time from the people that have been taking it away from the rest of us our whole lives”—the concept of friction reduction is overly familiar, and the frequent plugs for her business are off-putting. There’s little new here.

April 1, 2020

What will the next wave of successful start-up businesses have in common? According to Lemieux (Undecorate, The Finer Things) and McDonald (The Golden Passport) it's that they will deliver what they have promised (whatever that may be) without monopolizing any of their customers' preciously guarded free time. To be "frictionless," any given business transaction must seem to be effortless and instant and the start-ups that will flourish will be those driven by services that make something we're already doing easier, thereby adding to that free time. Though there are frequent references to co-author McDonald, the book is written as first-person advice from Lemieux. This advice comes largely in the form of examples from the current crop of start-ups that embody various aspects of the titular concept--"frictionless experience," "frictionless competition," "frictionless YOU"--31 in all. Lemieux also details what she's learned from her own start-up experiences with DwellStudio and The Inside. VERDICT Following the evolution of ideas that led to the businesses Lemieux describes makes for interesting reading as well as speculation as to whether her predictions of success will hold true. Will appeal to budding entrepreneurs and those interested in start-up culture.--Sara Holder, Univ. of Illinois Libs., Champaign

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