Making things people want vs. making things that alter thinking
Rohan Ganapavarapu highlights that successful startups like Uber and Airbnb fulfill market needs while changing societal perceptions. He suggests that products should aim to alter thinking to cultivate demand.
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Rohan Ganapavarapu discusses the interplay between creating products that people desire and those that fundamentally change their thinking. He emphasizes that successful startups often achieve both objectives, citing examples like Uber, Airbnb, Reddit, DoorDash, and OpenAI. Each of these companies not only fulfilled a market need but also shifted societal perceptions—Uber changed attitudes towards ridesharing, Airbnb altered views on hospitality, and OpenAI transformed the understanding of artificial intelligence. Ganapavarapu argues that for a product to scale effectively, it must resonate with people's desires while simultaneously prompting them to reconsider their existing beliefs and habits. He suggests that the relationship between these two concepts is reciprocal; the more a product influences thinking, the more it becomes desired. He proposes that asking whether a product changes thinking may be a more insightful question than simply inquiring if people want it. This perspective could help innovators avoid common pitfalls in product development. Ultimately, he concludes that to cultivate demand for a product, it should aim to alter the way people think.
- Successful startups often fulfill both desires and cognitive shifts.
- Examples include Uber, Airbnb, Reddit, DoorDash, and OpenAI.
- The relationship between desire and cognitive change is reciprocal.
- Asking if a product changes thinking may yield better insights than asking if it is wanted.
- Innovators should focus on altering perceptions to drive demand.
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12 commentsThis was not a good thing, and not intentional but a consequence of the SEO-driven commercialization of the web, walled gardens and such. Reddit didn't set out to 'change how online content is aggregated'. It's not necessarily higher quality content than before either, just the largest human place left.
Not being in the US, can someone explain to me what did Doordash change about delivery? I all see is these crazy chats with drivers when food goes missing.
> OpenAI completely shifted how people think about intelligence and the effects of AI on society.
AI has been a tech-utopian dream (or dystopian) dream/nighmare for over half a century. “We’ll get there eventually/it’s just a matter of time.” And people say the same thing for literally any current flaw in the current machine learning soups today.
There may be some insight to be gained with the concept in the essay, but the examples aren't great.
With Uber as the example, people wanted to be able to get around easier, AND their thinking was changed as to how they would do that.
Netflix, people wanted to easy access to movies, AND netflix changed how they thought about that. Not "oh a blockbuster is close by", but rather, I'll order by mail and always have something ready to go, and then I'll just stream it.
Tesla, people wanted high performance cars, AND Tesla changed how they think about electric cars. They're no longer elevated golf carts.
At our company AffectableSleep.com, people think they want more sleep time, but we're (trying to) change peoples thinking to ensuring they get optimal sleep recovery in the time they do have.
Nah. People already interacted that way back in the Usenet days. And we used Usenet search engines to get results from it specifically.
Reddit's only claim to fame is that happened to be there at the moment Digg became unusable.
to anyone developing a security product I would say that nobody wants security, they want what the security gets them. this probably generalizes to nobody wants your product, they want what your product gets them, and if you don't understand what that is, there is no PMF. however, it's also better to take advice from people who win instead of those who can over articulate their failures, so caveat emptor, ymmv, etc.
"tl;dr: making things people want and making things that alter thinking are isomorphic to each other"
I like the post (and think it goes well with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41522551) but I do not think "isomorphic" is the right word.
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