Flow’s Platform Fatigue Problem: Why Your Users Already Have Too Many Logins

Flow’s Platform Fatigue Problem: Why Your Users Already Have Too Many Logins

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Sivan Iram, CEO and Founder of Flow, shared an expensive lesson: sometimes your users are already drowning in portals, and adding one more—even a better one—is the problem.

Flow spent a year and a half building a self-service platform for insurance brokers. They secured carrier appointments. They built the technology. They convinced customers to pay licensing fees. On every metric that matters to investors and boards, they had traction.

Except one: nobody was actually using it.

“We took us about a year and a half to build the platform, to make appointments with carriers, and to go out and find agents who were willing to work with our product,” Sivan recalls. “And we did see revenue. We got paid for those early licenses. The vision was compelling and so were able to convince people to pay us the licensing fee.”

But paying for software and using it are different things. Flow had confused willingness to buy with intent to adopt.

The Engagement Numbers Don’t Lie

The platform had users and paying customers. What it lacked was consistent usage. Brokers would log in once, maybe place a submission, then return to email. The next time they needed a wholesaler, they’d skip the login.

“However, we found even though we had pockets of success, you could see that there was no brush fire. There was no product market fit moment where everything just, you know, works right and people just kind of calling you up, asking to join,” Sivan explains.

The nightmare scenario: customers who pay but don’t use your product. They’re one renewal from churning. They’re not getting value, which means they’re not referring others.

Flow dug into why. The technology worked. The UX was solid. The value proposition was clear. What they found was simpler and more fundamental.

The Real Problem

“Everybody has a platform today, carrier portals and platforms and whatnot. And we found that there’s a true concept of platform fatigue. You know, forgot my password, what’s my login credentials?” Sivan shares.

Platform fatigue isn’t just frustration—it’s structural. Every vendor wants customers using their portal. Every carrier wants brokers in their system. The result: dozens of logins across carriers, wholesalers, and service providers.

Flow’s platform was better than many others. But “better” doesn’t overcome the cognitive overhead of yet another login. The marginal utility of one more platform—even a good one—was negative.

The Deeper Issue

Platform fatigue wasn’t even the biggest problem. The real issue went to the core of what customers hired wholesalers to do.

“The bigger issue was that they were looking to us as their wholesaler, not only to get connected with our markets, which they could on the platform, but they needed our expertise, they needed our guidance, they needed our advice and insights,” Sivan explains.

Flow built a platform that solved for market access—connecting brokers directly to carriers. But brokers didn’t hire wholesalers just for market access. They hired them for expertise, for understanding coverage nuances, knowing which carriers are hungry for certain risks, and guidance through complex placements.

The self-service platform eliminated the very thing customers valued most. Flow had optimized away their own value proposition.

The Pivot That Saved The Company

About a year ago, Flow made a decision that seemed like regression: abandon the platform and go back to email.

“We decided about a year ago to bring this platform in house and work with our agents in the way that they love to work with wholesalers, which is the email,” Sivan shares.

This wasn’t giving up on technology—it was using it differently. Instead of asking brokers to change their workflow, Flow rebuilt their backend to work within brokers’ existing workflow.

Brokers send submissions via email—exactly as they always have. “We take in submissions via email with attachments. And we employ technology to be really efficient with the way that we place. We structure that data with AI agents.”

Behind that familiar interface, AI handles everything. The broker experiences no friction, no login, no platform. Just email in, fast response out.

The results: “In the past nine months, we’ve been tripling our top line every single month. We’ve been tripling our submission volume.”

The Distribution Lesson

Flow’s platform failure reveals something crucial: friction matters more than features. Your product can be objectively better, but if adopting it requires changing behavior, adding tools to an overcrowded stack, or creating cognitive overhead, you’re fighting uphill.

The question isn’t “Is our platform better?” It’s “Is our platform better enough to justify the switching cost and ongoing cognitive load of one more login?”

For Flow, the answer was no. Not because the platform was bad, but because the bar for “better enough” in platform fatigue environments is extraordinarily high.

This explains why B2B platforms struggle with adoption despite superior technology. They’re not competing against inferior solutions—they’re competing against the cumulative friction of users’ entire software stack.

When Platforms Make Sense

Platform fatigue doesn’t mean platforms never work. It means understanding when platforms create more value than friction.

Platforms work when you’re replacing a manual process, users work in your platform daily, the value is compelling enough to tolerate overhead, or you have market power to force adoption.

Flow had none of these. They were adding to existing stacks, asking for occasional usage, and entering as a new player.

The email approach works because email is universal infrastructure. No login to remember, no new interface to learn, no context switching. It’s ambient in users’ workflows.

The Broader Pattern

For founders evaluating distribution, Flow’s lesson is straightforward: meet users where they are, don’t ask them to come to you.

This might mean building Slack integrations instead of standalone apps, working through email instead of portals, creating browser extensions instead of separate applications, or using APIs that integrate with existing tools.

The goal isn’t your own platform—it’s delivering value with minimum friction. Sometimes that means invisible infrastructure rather than branded experiences.

Flow’s pivot cost 18 months and significant capital. But it taught them something invaluable: in a world of platform fatigue, the winning move often isn’t building a better platform. It’s eliminating the need for one entirely.

When brokers send Flow submissions via email, they’re not comparing platforms. They’re just working. The best distribution strategy is the one users don’t notice—the one that fits seamlessly into what they’re already doing.