Don’t Sell Saddles

Reading time: 5 min

Today’s high-signal drops:

• Makes-You-Think Tweet: on executing on intelligence
• Mind-Expanding Concept: don’t sell saddles
• Cool Quote or Question: on assumptions
• High-Signal Content: the evolution of culture

Makes-You-Think Tweet

Mind-Expanding Concept

Don’t Sell Saddles

If your company makes saddles, you're playing in a very niche market. Saddles have been used for...ever, so there's likely tons of competition. Tons of competition = no bueno.

How can it differentiate itself from competitors while expanding its market?

A common saying in tech circles is "don't sell features, sell benefits". Ok, makes sense. But go one level up to make it more powerful: Don't sell the product, sell the lifestyle. Don't talk about the leather softness (and whatever else is important in a saddle), talk about the tradition, the elegance, and the vibes of horseback riding. You're in it not to sell this thing you sit on, you're in it because horseback riding is part of who we are since the dawn of civilization. Suddenly, your company is not focusing (only) on improving the saddle but on helping riders become more of themselves, potentially selling them other products along the way.

From: Stewart Butterfield (Slack CEO), here - via Shaan Puri

Cool Quote or Question

Making the implicit explicit is a cheat code to better decisions

High-Signal Content

“Unlike biological evolutionary systems, human minds are capable of knowing what ideas mean. Biological evolution can only test an idea by trying it out in practice, and failure involves the death or incapacitation of the holder. But we can criticise ideas. We can examine their meaning and decide, without having to enact them, whether we think that doing so would further our purposes or not. For every idea that we test in practice, we first test thousands in our imagination.”

See you next week,

Filipe