// October 16th, 2009 // Comments // Startup, strategy
(This story originally ran on the Pollenizer blog and is re-published here because it’s on my mind right now and it still has legs… the story, not my mind.)
You remember the future we were promised, right? It had flying cars, robotic housemaids, one-piece shiny suits and meals in convenient pill form. We don’t live in that future because the people planning utopia fell in love with their own beliefs about what consumers wanted. They missed the gross and subtle cues that consumers use to indicate that this is not something they want, need or are prepared to pay for. It’s important to learn how to read those cues or your own startup vision may turn out to be as popular as nuclear flying car.
But first, let’s look back on the brighter, shinier future we were promised. As an impressionable adult I look back on when I was an impressionable boy and remember how deeply I had bought-in to that utopian future. At the age of 12 I had decided I’d be working as a journalist in a bustling colony on the Moon by the age of 30, flying to work, my only wardrobe choices the silver one-piece or the bronze one-piece, working late each night on a dinner pill. I’m a geek and I bought it wholesale. This was the future I wanted. Turns out, I was in the minority!
What happened to our bright utopian future? Real consumer behaviour happened. Society did not and does not really want a utopian future. Consider this: each of those emblemic utopian products kinda/sorta exists today:
Flying car: the Terrafugia Transition is more of a driveable airplane than a flyable car but it’s roadworthy, and once it has approval from the authorities you can drive it to an airport and fly it to another airport. The future we were promised included nuclear fusion-powered saucers, so where did the utopian product manager go wrong? He Underestimating the bureaucracy of the FAA, sure, but really the big mistake was an unfounded optimism that if consumer demand was high enough, the nascent nuclear industry would be able to solve the safety and disposal problems of nuclear energy. Turns out, no amount of commute time saved is enough to offset the fear of contaminating your neighbourhood with radioactive waste for the next half a million years. Almost always emotions (fear) beat logic (we’ll solve this) in the consumer mind.
Meals in pill form: turns out in reality meals are more easily delivered in powder form, and you can even get something better than a meal, if what you want to do is lose weight. Turns out the powdered meal replacement marketplace is quite a bit bigger than the market for flying cars but it’s not something most people choose to do. What went wrong? If asked, “Would you like to be able to save time by consuming a meal in pill form?” most consumers will say yes: sometimes they would like that. But the unasked question is, “how often?” and our utopian product manager either didn’t ask that or didn’t want to hear the answer.
Shiny one-piece suits: you only have to go to a fashion show, a car race, or buy one online to debunk the idea that these are somehow more practical and comfortable than jeans and a tee. Our utopian product manager was on happy drugs for this one.
Robot housemaid: the robot housemaid could be easily the most mainstream utopian product that exists today, yet consumers just won’t go for it. The iRobot company of Massacheusetts makes a whole range of the things. I pitch the joys of Roomba ownership to almost every visitor to our house — I’m famous for it — and I’m not too shabby at the art of the pitch. Anybody who doesn’t believe me need only check Amazon – this is a product that gets a 5 star review from nearly half the people who’ve bought one. So why have I been unable to convert even one single person yet?
Two simple reasons: almost everybody who cares about a clean floor already has a vacuum cleaner; and without exception they actually prefer to clean their floor themselves to make sure the job is done to their own high standard. They don’t want to be freed of the burden of cleaning the floor. They might tell a utopian product manager that they would love to be able to trust the cleaning to a robot, but you know what? They never will. Their housekeeping ability is closely associated with their self-esteem. You would have to pay them to allow a robot to do it, and even then they would stand there and watch it work, waiting for it to fail. That’s not increasing quality of life, it’s increasing anxiety. The only product people are prepared to buy that increases their anxiety is tobacco, apparently.
Even good startup founders make bad decisions
As startup founders designing online services, what can we learn from the mistakes of the utopian product manager? It is this: the very faith that makes you a good startup founder makes you a lousy judge of what consumers truly want to buy from you.
To even get a break as a startup founder you need an idea; more than idea, you need a dream, preferrably an unshakeable one. You need to evangelise not just consumers but sceptical investors, employees, industry and media. You can walk in with a meter-high stack of convincing-looking qualitative and quantitative research meant to back you up, but at best that’ll help with the post-purchase rationalisation. People will get on-board because they believe you, and they will believe you only if you have faith. And faith does not require facts. In fact, the more you have faith, the less you need facts and the more likely you are to select the facts that reinforce your faith.
The successful startup founders I know often have the uncanny ability to go to bat — and hit a home run — for ideas they don’t have much faith in. It’s a psychological makeup that is useful in sales roles; perhaps that’s why I know many successful startup founders from a sales background. Faith can really get in the way of building products consumers want. Not having faith in your product and your strategy requires you to apply reason, it allows you to subject a business to the strictest scrutiny, to make 110% sure that consumers aren’t just being polite to the nice young man who asked them if they’d be interested in buying a nuclear-powered flying car.
If you have faith, perhaps you have the wrong product, or you are the wrong person for the job. Get yourself a CEO (stay on as founder) an equal partner or an advisory board who don’t need faith and then pay close attention to what they’re telling you about what the market is saying.
Sadly for those of us who’d still love to be flying our robot housemaids, if you don’t have faith but everybody believes you anyway, you’re well on your way to success.
(That’s a depressing note to end on, so here’s a very funny skit about flying cars and what you should — or shouldn’t — be prepared to do to get one.)
