Ask HN: When to Build a Faster Horse? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: When to Build a Faster Horse?

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Henry Ford once said: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

But he didn't went out to make horses faster, he built a car.

I read many stories like that. People say listen to your customers, but many successfully built something their customers wouldn't have tought about, let alone liked when they heard the idea.

What's your opinion on this?

Is there a point in faster horses?

Should we focus on cars?

Are their heuristics that help us choose the right way?

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The moral of the story is to uncover the problems and not jump to solutions. In other words, what is the job to be done? What are the current state, the desired state, and the gap separating the two?

Most people I see using this quote often will talk more about Steve Jobs, and ignoring customers or the market and solely relying on intuition and creative genius. I don't know how to put it, but most people who think like that are missing the point.

When you develop a product or do consulting, you solve a problem. One must never, ever, forget that. One must also recognize when people are spitting solutions thinking they are giving you problems. Asking "what are you trying to accomplish?" "What's the desired state?" What's hurting you? Why is this a problem? Why is it a problem now or was it there before? If I told you I've solved the problem, what would you look for to check I have actually solved your problem? How do we know we've solved the problem?

These are questions we ask over and over again in different forms working with our clients, because not doing so would lead us to solving the wrong problem or adopting the wrong solution to the underlying problem.

You peel away layers of solutions and get right down to the actual problem, and once you do that, you can start solving that problem.

That is the moral of the quote. The job to be done may be to transport something from point A to point B, work the land, court a lady, etc. A faster horse is a "solution" or an "implementation" of the customer, not the the problem.

XY problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem

> The moral of the story is to uncover the problems and not jump to solutions.

Exactly this.

I wrote up a post[0], where I mention this in the conclusion:

It’s usually not a good idea to ask a user “What do you want?” as guidance for new stuff, as this won’t give me guidance for future directions.

Instead, ask them “What do you want TO DO?”. Don’t couch it in terms of OUR work. We should look at what THEY want to do, in terms of THEIR work, and see if that switches on any light bulbs.

[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/the-road-most-travel...

Listening to your customers doesn’t mean “give them what they think they want”.

Customers typically just mention a solution that’s a bit better than what they have, and won’t even mention the root problem they want to solve (they’ll ask for faster ways to fill in paper forms, for example, without questioning the existence of those forms)

Good designers will ask follow-up questions to unearth the problem to be solved, then think about the best (given the state of technology, available budget, political and social constraints) solution. That may be a faster horse, but need not be.

I think the point Ford was trying to make is that you should listen to your customers, but also think for yourself. If a customer says ‘I want a faster horse’, you need to ask, ‘what is it that they really want / what is it they’re actually saying?’.

In Ford’s case that might be something like: ‘I want it to be faster / easier / cheaper to get from point A to point B’. If the way to deliver that to a customer is better horses or a car, it doesn’t really matter so long as the desired value is provided.

Find an emerging market, work hard to be the leader of it, and hope it actually emerges.

PS: There's no proof Ford said that quote. He also didn't take his own advice if he had said it. He spent almost years making cheaper Model T's instead of better cars, and losing a good chunk of the automotive market share in the process.

Perhaps a way to look at it is, is the faster horse a solution, that is scalable, or is it a bandaid that will fix the immediate problem but no more.

Not every problem needs a scalable solution, and bandaid is perfectly good. But many problems do need that.

So, start with the problem and go from there.

>When to Build a Faster Horse?

When customers are standing by willing, able, and already paying a premium for every bit of speed that can be delivered, with no end in sight.

And you want to get in the door of an already-occurring cash flow without having to create your own new market.

A faster horse than they've ever seen will get their attention immediately and make you money right away.

Even if you've already invented a Model T, have a working prototype, and are highly aware of the promise of mass production.

Once you're actually prevailing in the market for speed itself, then you have the best position to leverage the imagination about the possibilities of a world having automotive garages, pavement, motor fuels, etc, and your little invention delivering the no-end-in-sight that horses will not be able to keep up with.

This is a way of funding growth by directly participating in the target market you are planning to disrupt.

An established market is at least somewhat rational compared to a not-yet-established market, but at least it's already a market.

There were others long forgotten besides Ford who launched with cars trying to survive when there was only a horse market, they all became unknown because they failed to remain solvent while the new market was still becoming existent, then rational. Ford is a survivor head and shoulders above the turbulent waters.

Some established coach makers prospered with the arrival of the automotive age (simply supplying the faster buggys the motor companies needed for their mechanical horsepower) while things like highly innovative EV's never got past the prototype stage or off the drawing board.

Ford succeeded in creating a new mass market for his particular invention, which only allowed participation by others having products of great similarity, but could not keep them out within IP limitations.

He had a low cost advantage that lasted years also.

A very bold vision to insure worthwhile copies of his invention were available, and if popularized, many copies, each adding value to raw materials beyond the financial gains attainable.

Him and Edison seem to have a lot in common and enjoyed spending some time together real well.

He must have gotten a hold of more resources to work with compared to your average used horse salesman too.

> People say listen to your customers

I've found that the most vocal customers/clients are nearly always a minority and are the ones that don't pay as well.

So if you are going to listen to your customers, make sure you're listening to all of them, not just the ones screeching in your ear!

One heuristic: Can you build a faster horse? Marginally, a bit, maybe, but not really. That's telling you that they want something faster, but it can't actually be a horse.

Almost always*

*For broad definitions of 'horse'

Would you want a faster horse? If yes, then build a faster horse

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