Overfitting. Products That Aren’t Needed For People That Don’t Need Them
This is how it works: You Artificially create a need/demand — then provide a solution for it under the guise of necessity. That could be an insider joke in business 101. Sadly, it’s quite common practice, especially in the tech space.
The blockchain hype of 2017 is one such example. How many projects actually even had a product, let alone a good one? After all, 80% of all projects were straight-up scams.
Overfitting Products…
Internet speed improved tremendously, but also faster than infrastructure and in many rural areas demand. We went from
1G (1979, 2.4 kilobits/sec) _ _ _
to 2G (1991, 40 kilobits/sec) — — —
to 3G (1998, 3 megabits/sec) ~~~~
to 4G (2008, 60 megabits/sec) ```````
and now 5G (2020, 2 gigabits/sec) ’’’’’’’’’’
Greater speed is fantastic, but 5G requires potent transmitters raising the ever-existing fear of harmful radiation even further.
The problem doesn’t not lie with 5g actually being harmful or beneficial, and if yes to what degree, but whether it is needed.
Another example are shoes in Africa. Is their supply priority? How much more important are they compared to clean water or reliable electricity?
Prior, you had a reliable signal from within a tunnel. Now, closing the door can disconnect someone in the other room. Speed at the cost of range and penetration.
… And Then Selling Them To The Oblivious
After Liechtenstein’s copper cables were replaced with ones made from fiber, coaxial cables were suddenly called redundant by major local internet and TV companies and — as if by sheer coincidence — costly TV box were suddenly pitched to consumers everywhere. Everyone and their grandmother (quite literally) got emails, calls, and brochures with pricy year-long contracts in them (and plenty of fine print).
Architectural instructions read (translated from German):
Coax infrastructure remains a requirement. Without, customers are severely limited in their options for both TV and internet services.” This refers to many installations requiring coax because there is simply no infrastructure (yet) to use e.g. fiber.
The worst part about it: the campaigns mainly targeted (and still do) less tech-savvy people like the elderly. More often than not, the infrastructure isn’t even compatible and costly pre-installations are required. In other words, the perfectly fine and fast coaxial wires and plugins get covered up and forgotten.
Title.
Why did the original iPhone have no stylus? Because it’s a hassle and problem hazard. Why is the above title just the word title? Does the job.
Major state of the art products are often barely more than one big button. It’s efficient, aesthethically pleasing and that means profits.
Every failed Kickstarter project (or Indigo, or Go Fund Me, or ___) is a perfect example. They can be divided into 3 categories.
- The product was not needed,
- was too much of a moon shot,
- or downright illegal (i.e. blocked by regulators one way or another).
You don’t need to be a multi-billion dollar venture to open up a bakery. It’s a simple product and it makes sense. But the same can be said about start-ups in big and competitive markets.
Just because it’s a tech business, doesn’t mean it has to be huge and/or automatically compete with the likes of Google. If it’s profitable it works. Simple as that.
ßitgrit is a prime example. They do recruiting and competitions. Signing up takes a minute and it’s very obvious what the company does. Their why is too. Finding niche bilingual talent in Japan is hard, and there is no prize money for non-American Kaggle competitors. It’s barely more than a sign-up form. Well done.
No shady tactics, no upselling, adjusted to the consumer’s needs, and the webpage couldn’t be any simpler is what a company should do.
Another great example is the blockchain venture UniWorld. You put in your name in a form and you can use typical BC tech such as crypto payments decentralized Apps right away.
