Comment by waxman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by waxman | Hacker News Reader

In one of my favorite startup books, Made to Stick (http://amzn.to/ccF7X7), the authors describe the genius of Southwest airlines, which has been, by a long shot, the most successful airline company ever (with something like 37 consecutive years of profit).

The Founder and CEO had an incredibly clear and actionable vision: "we are THE low-cost airline."

This worked like magic both internally and externally. At the company, answers to even the most complex questions could be rendered relatively obvious through the lens of this mantra. Does it increase costs or not? (e.g. Halloween costumes for employees? Sure. Lunch on the Houston to Florida flight? Nope - would raise costs).

And externally, customers know why to fly Southwest: it's cheaper.

If your vision isn't as succinct and actionable as Southwest's, then it's not clear enough: both for employees and for potential customers.

yeah, but companies that compete on price have an unfair advantage when it comes to differentiating. Price is something immediately obvious internally and externally.

As far as marketing price, the key, really, is to make it clear you aren't skimping on the really important things (like, say, flight safety) and the best way, I think, to do that is to be open about what you are skimping on. we all want something for nothing, but most of us don't believe we can actually get it.

But, my point is that any idiot (even me) can provide a "vision" for a company that just wants to be the cheapest. Really, the only hard part is deciding what to skimp on.

It gets a lot more complex if you have other goals, like say, Virgin, who I would call the "apple of the sky" - I mean, for both companies, the mission is to be comfortable and to appeal to "cool" people even if they might cost a few more dollars than the competition.

(note, I actually fly Virgin sometimes, even though I don't buy Apple products. For me, the in-flight wi-fi is worth around $50, so if the difference between Virgin and the next carrier is less than that, the decision is made. But, I think Virgin thinks of itself as more than just "the company with WiFi" as more and more other airlines are adopting that perk.)

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