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I may be arguing semantics but isn't the first a type of the second? It's STILL solving a problem people have today. It just is a problem that consumers don't r
by Hisoka 15y ago
I may be arguing semantics but isn't the first a type of the second? It's STILL solving a problem people have today. It just is a problem that consumers don't recognize very clearly for some reason.. maybe because they framed an existing problem the wrong way (ie. they think problem X is a financial problem when it was really a psychological problem.) Twitter for instance solves the problem of not having our social/attention needs met. It's a problem that too's abstract for people to complain about, but it's there.
- sokoloff 15y agoIf you squint hard enough, sure. But that's not the point of dividing the space along these lines. Think of gunpowder, the steam and then internal combusion engines, electric distribution and lightbulbs, the automobile, heavier than air flight at all, helicopters. Sure, each of those solved actual pain that people had (otherwise they'd have not caught on as successful products). But the difference is that products in the first category solve problems that customers aren't complaining about, often because there's no frame of reference to allow them to complain about it. Their bow and arrows, oxen, gas lights, carriages, ships and hot air balloons are working just fine, maybe they just need a small tweak or two. (I even put TiVo/ReplayTV into the first category, even though we had VCRs at the time.)