Introduction
Many people think it’s all about the money. They are wrong, of course. This is a great business, and it’s going to be a great business for a long time. But there is so much more that makes up what we call our “brand.”
The good news is that we have been very good at advertising and marketing ourselves (as we have always done). We can afford to invest in the right things because we are already making a lot of money from our customers, and we can hire some very talented people to help us do this – but that’s just part of the story.
We have sold our brand as well as anything else in the world. We know what our customers want and what they value. We know why they buy from us and which characteristics they look for when they buy products; we design products which support their interests; we create an experience which makes them feel like they are part of something important rather than just another customer or person; and we build systems which work well together so that customers can get value from us whether or not they pay us for it in the first place.
Can you buy a car with $240 dollars?
You can buy a car with $240, but you can’t get a job with $240, and most importantly, you can’t make it as an engineer with $240. You would need to make a lot more than $240 before you could become an engineer.
On the other hand, if $240 is enough money to buy a product, then someone somewhere started using that product and decided that it was worth trying to sell it. The key question is not one of whether your product exists or not (even at the moment), but whether someone who wants it wants to pay for it. A startup doesn’t have time to optimize their price; they have time to figure out how much they need to charge for their product. If your product is valuable enough (based on user feedback), then people will pay more to get it — but if your market isn’t large enough (based on what you know about the market) then you’re going to need quite a bit more than $260 to convince people there’s something in it for them.[ ]
Can you buy a house with $240 dollars?
While “what can you buy with 240 dollars” has been around for quite a while, its recent popularity is the result of the proliferation of “what can you buy with 240 dollars” articles on the web. These articles are all (rightly) titled “Can You Buy a House with $240 Dollars?” and usually consist of a list of things to look for in a home. The difference here is that we are talking about products and services, so, for example, let’s say you are looking for a car: what exactly does it cost to get one? What does it take to get from point A to point B? What do you need in order to get from point C to point D?
The answer is different for each product or service; and that makes this kind of analysis very difficult. If your product or service doesn’t fit into any category, then there really isn’t much you can say about it. In other words, this kind of analysis will be very helpful only if you are in the business of selling things that people want — and not just items they can pay for.
The same goes for real estate. While there are no doubt some companies out there that do this sort of analysis; and in fact I have seen a few articles on this topic on my own site (which admittedly isn’t much) as well as on other sites such as Zillow; I believe most people buy real estate because they don’t have enough data to make an informed decision.
Can you buy a computer with $240 dollars?
We often hear the question “Can you buy a computer with $240 dollars?”. The answer to that question is not as straightforward as it seems (and not just because we’re working with a limited budget):
There are many ways of thinking about what can be bought with $240. But, even when we think about these things in more detail, there are still issues. For example, what exactly is the computer? Is it a processor? A hard disk? RAM? A display monitor? Some other kind of device that connects to the internet or has some kind of input/output device but doesn’t connect to the internet? Or, perhaps most importantly: can you actually buy a computer with $240 dollars?
The answer for some of these questions is yes, but for others no. For example, yes you can buy a car with $240 dollars but that doesn’t mean you can buy a car with 240 dollars: there are additional expenses, like insurance and maintenance costs. And if that was your only concern, then maybe you shouldn’t have started this journey in the first place – but if the goal is to try and figure out how to make money and save money while you do it (and that’s why we started), then we need to take into account at least some of these considerations as well.
If you were trying to decide whether or not to get an iPhone or an Android phone right now – would you want one over the other (or both) based on features alone? Would choosing between them come down more heavily because they offer access to all of Apple’s services (like music)? Would Apple-like services like iTunes seem less relevant later on if they didn’t cost much and give users access to lots of other useful apps already installed on their phones / computers / laptops (like iMessage)? Who knows – probably not many people. In fact, it may be that none of those considerations would apply in your situation at all!
But this isn’t about phones or computers; it’s about consumption decisions made by software developers selling products for consumption decisions made by software users deciding which software they want and how they want it used . That’s why I keep saying “You can’t buy a computer with $240 dollars” instead of “You should buy this computer”. Say what you will about Microsoft’s operating systems: people will put up with their cruft for years before deciding whether
Can you buy food with $240 dollars?
The title of this post is an obvious rip-off of an old article, and I have to say that I did not intend it to be taken that way (I like to think the author was just trying to make a point). But the title has been taken that way anyway; so I’d like to clarify a bit. To keep things as clear as possible:
The title of this post is not about whether you can buy food for $240 dollars. The title is about which problem you can solve with money:
• In general, if you can solve a problem, then you can buy it. That’s why we recommend in our book (and in the book itself) that you think carefully about whether or not your product solves problems and ask yourself if it would be worthwhile spending time, money and effort on it. If it doesn’t, forget it. There are plenty of others out there who will do just fine with less effort than yours might take up. As far as the food example goes, many people will tell you that shopping for groceries is a waste of time or unnecessary — but when you look at what the world needs right now rather than what we think we need, it seems obvious that nearly everything worth buying should be bought or made by hand or with tools. The biggest physical transformations in human history were all done by hand or by tools — from cave paintings to the printing press — so why wouldn’t we be able to do something similar?
• If your product solves a real problem for real people, then there’s no reason why they shouldn’t have access to some form of what they need at little or no cost.
One way to make sure your product helps solve real problems is by asking them themselves: ask them what they value most when they realize their goal with your product (or ask them if they would pay more). They will usually tell you what they value most and what they don’t value most; so if those are your main criteria for deciding whether an idea is worth pursuing (or not), then consider yourself lucky! Even if these answers aren’t perfect (though again …), at least you started out asking! You could also try asking technical people about their favorite products rather than relying on respondents from other disciplines (or even completely unrelated domains); but remember that those answers are bound to be biased towards technical solutions because most people who work on technology don’t
Conclusion
If you have an idea that’s not worth doing, raise the price to reduce your risk. If you have a viable and interesting idea that’s worth doing, raise the price to make it more valuable.