My favorite quote from it:
“Someone should definitely make an X!”
“Have you looked for an X?”
“No, why?”
“There are like 10 different kinds of X.”
“Well I didn't really need it anyway.”
Long story short, that person is a complainer, not a customer. They’re stuck in the la-la-land of imagining they’re the sort of person who finds clever ways to solve the petty annoyances of their day.
A: What the world really needs is a native Java compiler. That would be really great! You should write one.
W: I wrote one for Symantec. You can buy it today.
A: I don't want it.
It's possible to make good java compiler into native code and then sell it to a big corp, but I'm not a big corp, so it's good idea, but I'm not a target audience for it.
I've written many products over the years, some were successes, others were failures. A common thread has emerged: all the failures were pitched by others. All the successes were ones I wrote to please myself, and everyone told me I was a unique snowflake and nobody else would want it and I would fail.
This is highly quotable.
"You make apps? I have a great app idea that'll make you rich! All of us in [profession] would use it! You see... [explains idea].... It would save me hours every week and no one's done it yet, for some reason!"
Me: searches the App Store You mean like any of these first five results that are all literally the exact thing you're describing, are targeted at your profession, and that you want sooooo much that you've never even bothered to search for it and plunk down consults screen $14.99?"
We had an "innovative" name, so we got loads of "You should change your name to X" and "You're not getting elected because you're named Z not Y".
Lots of my team was really worried about it. But I always told them to ask these people if that's the reason why they are not voting for us.
There were only two answers:
(1) "Nah, I'm still voting for you, but OTHER people MIGHT not."
and
(2) "Nah, i would not vote for you even if you were named X or Y"
It really taught me to stop assuming things.
In other words, "would you not buy/not vote because of this problem" is a bad method of analysis, and will tell you that it had no effect when it actually did.
1 - https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Cu...
[2] looks interesting
The thing with separating complainers from customer is a great learning as well. If you just see complainers maybe the problem isn't that important ;)
> If you just see complainers maybe the problem isn't that important ;)
Good point.
I'd like to quote this and add kudos for that. There's a lot of books that could be a blog post, needlessly padded out. 100 pages sounds a lot more manageable.
Books are usually padded with needless repetition and anecdotes.
There aren't many non-fiction books that are 150p and less. Hmmm
“Someone should definitely make an X!”
“Have you looked for an X?”
“No, why?”
Reminds me of the classic line and omition from the dating world:
"He's a great guy, he'd make a great husband." ... for somebody else.