Literally every single person that gives me advice about startups tells me I need to “solve a problem” or “talk to customers”. And if you’re building something or starting a company, I’m sure you’ve faced this too. Having empathy and knowing who you are building for is extremely important. But because of this, “talk to users” rhetoric, some of us (including me) tend to ignore a core part of building new things. Taking a risk and building something that you think should exist. And more importantly, having the courage to form strong opinions about how the future should look like.
This insanely long essay about “Product Driven vs. Customer Driven Businesses” drives the point home. The most important distinction between a product driven company vs. a customer driven company that the essay makes is that product driven companies are in the business of making people “want things” and customer driven companies are in the business of making things that “people want”.
Fascination and curiosity is something that drives people to want things. Things people are fascinated by often look like toys in the beginning. Just look at Snapchat. We’ll want to play with them, understand how they work. They often end up changing the way we work. Here’s a quote from Joseph Campbell from one of his lectures recorded back in the 70s about what makes somebody “want” things.
“It’s the want. It’s the aspiration. And what is wanted is not simply one, two or three meals per day and a bed. That’s not enough. It’s gotta be much more than that to make a life. Now where do these aspirations come from? They come from a very wonderful, child-like thing. Fascination. You know if you wanted to make money, I’m no economist but I’ll bet, the thing to do would be to invest your money in something like cameras. Things that people play with. Things that they are fascinated by. These fascinations are the creations of new activities. And when we looked at the old cultures, we can see. Some of it is very strange to see indeed.” — Joesph Campbell
And a few decades later, cameras became very popular. Cameras gave rise to all kinds of new activities and routines. Cameras even gave birth to new businesses. Turns out, Joesph Campbell’s investment strategy was correct all along. FYI Snapchat is a “camera” company.
If you think you’re building a product driven company. Focus on learning more about how the world works. Expose yourself to different cultures and perspectives. Build new mental models based on your unique experiences. Prime your intuition by learning from yours and other people’s experiences. Spend time learning more than one discipline. Understand what fascinates you. Form strong opinions about the future but also have the courage to change them based on new data. And finally, go build amazing things.
I would personally rather build aspirational products that change the way we do things rather than solve mundane problems.
I’ll leave you with this video about how Apple decides what to work on based on Technical Vectors from the OG entrepreneur himself.
