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Comment by manv1 | Hacker News Reader

TL;DR: if this guy is on your team, you're hosed.

At a place I worked a Colonel came in to give a pep talk about the IED work we were doing. He was talking about his time in Iraq/Afghanistan: he was in a jeep and his driver was killed by an IED. A few years later his jeep was again blown up by an IED, and his driver was killed.

My takeaway was: don't drive with this guy.

There was an article a few years ago about people that buy products that fail. They bought an IBM PC Jr, a Coleco Adam, the Zune, etc. They are like toxic customers...not that they're bad customers, just they choose products that die in the market. They're basically negative influencers.

I never thought there'd be employees like that, but I'm wrong.

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But is it true that the people who bought the products that fail only bought products that failed? Aren't they just early adopters? You win some, you lose some?

I bought a ZuneHD (I still think it was better than the iPod at the time), but I was also an early adopter of the 2nd gen iPod (wasn't a mac user, so couldn't get 1st gen).

I was running in minimalist footwear prior to FiveFingers. Early on the bandwagon of Bitcoin, Arduino, and many other things.

I've got a Microsoft Band, and had (and miss) my Windows Phone.

I'm trying to think of all the failed vs successful products I've had, but I've definitely had both.

I don't really believe there are people who buy failed products, there are early adopters, who will generally have many products that fail.

>there are early adopters, who will generally have many products that fail.

The better people get at using data to optimize selling products, the more rewarding it is financially to tweak something established compared to investing in establishing something new.

So I'm morally certain that new products are getting a shorter leash than ever.

Though that may be true, I also think as it gets less expensive to develop products, we'll see more people try more things.

Lets also not forget that all the things I mentioned were successful enough that nobody had to ask what it was. Think of all the products that never even made it to that level.

I never owned a Kin! So maybe I have some taste.

> There was an article a few years ago about people that buy products that fail.

It was on HN too four months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31820168

> They're basically negative influencers.

Anyone who tries new things (more than the average consumer) will find products that don't have traction yet, which in turn will be disproportionately likely to be discontinued.

This logic doesn't depend on their taste being better, worse, or different than other peoples'.

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