Ship Ideas & Products of Market Value
A tweet ran past my eyes yesterday bemoaning the fact people will pay $4 for a coffee but balk at paying $4 for a software application. The coffee is created in 5 minutes and the application is created in 5 months.
Comparing Coffee to Applications
The obvious comment that rolls off the tongue is… coffee and applications are different. The fundamental difference could be naively seen as the product to product comparison of hot liquid held in somebody’s hand to provide sensory satisfaction in a social setting… in comparison to the intangible something that invisibly makes their iPhone do something cute, stupid or useful.
Comparing coffee to applications based solely on the labour used to produce the end product (ignoring, for example, the growing of coffee beans, harvest, shipping and roasting) makes very little sense. And, to be honest, I know the comment was tweeted flippantly between like-minded people.
The Market Doesn’t Owe Baloney
The fundamental problem of these flippant comments is that the creators of software applications… in fact, the creators of many goods that go to the market… believe they have a right to be paid for their labour. It’s a privilege; it’s not a right.
News Flash – the market doesn’t owe developers baloney. It’s the developer’s job to create something that the market feels is worth that $4… it’s not the market’s job to meet the price developers ask for their application.
It’s the developer’s job to provide ideas and products that people want and are willing to put silver in their palm to acquire.
Go Back to the Reason for Business
The fundamental purpose of business isn’t to make money. No. The purpose is to fill an unmet social need… and a by-product of filling that social need well is the generation of income.
If developers create something that’s absolutely great like a super heated butt exercising dog walking pair of robot pants there may be no social need. Hence nobody is willing to pay for those sophisticated robot pants that took ten people five years to produce… hence there is no market for robot pants.
In that scenario the developer of the robot pants may add up their accounts and deem $200,000 to be the value of robot pants. However, they would be wrong. The value of robot pants is determined by the market… in this case there is no market and the value of robot pants is $0. Cry, naive developer, cry.
This is the problem confronting software application developers who whine about people’s unwillingness to grease their palms with silver. They need to readjust their ideas about business, value and market forces.
The Market Determines Worthiness
The jungle of the market determines whether a product is good or bad. End of story. Don’t argue with that… I don’t care if it’s the sweetest bit of geek tail in the country… if nobody is willing to pay the price then the Emperor has turned down his thumb.
Coffee does both of those things. Coffee provides something that people are willing to pay $4 to experience. Coffee fulfils an unmet social need. The trick is in shipping ideas and products that fulfil that criteria. And as the fake Chopper Read would say – harden the fuck up.
