In high school, I used to stay up late at night watching infomercials while I worked on homework. I’d always think to myself:
Who would ever buy this shit?
but its pretty obvious that people are still buying the slap chop, that glove that helps you peel potatoes, and the sewing machine that apparently lets you sew your shirt while you’re still wearing it.
The realization that people are so easily sold on these types of producats has always eaten at me. I liked to think that I was not so easily swayed into paying for things I quite clearly didn’t need. But now that I’m old enough to have tangible income, I find myself to be the not so proud owner of an iron gym, and my own sister — who I regard as intelligent and down to earth — has a magic bullet. Maybe I’m not so good at knowing when I’m being sold something I don’t need.
In defense of As Seen On TV
Very few people could argue that there are benefits to the products that you see on store shelves with that red logo on them. Tater Mitts™ mostly likely do make it much easier to peel a potato. The reason most of us see products like this as stupid or at least a frivilous puchase see it as such because it’s not that hard to peel a potato in the first place. The people who make Tater Mitts™ are trying to capitalise on improving the efficiency of something that wasn’t in need of an efficiency boost, and the people who buy it simply fall victim to the thought that their saved time is worth the three easy payments of $9.99 (plus shipping and handling).
Is your SaaS a potato peeler?
Watching more and more products come rolling through the Hacker News front page has made me think that we might be approaching this type of stagnation in the startup world. It is becoming more and more popular (maybe sexy?) to be the founder of a startup, so people are looking for ideas of where they can shave a few seconds off the time it takes to do something by throwing technology at it. Once the tech is in place, you just have to build a sweet marketing page that reminds everyone how valuable their time is and why they should stop peeling their potatoes with a kinfe like the pilgrims did.
The dangerous thing about this practice is that it makes it difficult to sift through the bullshit to find the real gems. Many great products have to struggle to yell through the noise to get their product seen and — more imporantly — taken seriously.
I think the startup world is at the beginning of a PR nightmare that we’re going to have to work together to fix. So maybe the next time you rehearse your pitch, watch this video right after and see if you can pick out any similarities.
