Solving real pain is the only shortcut to demand.
I once paid twenty dollars for a garbage bag at a concert just to stay out of the freezing cold rain.
I remember standing there, soaked and shivering, while a guy walked by selling garbage bags for twenty bucks each. Not ponchos. Not jackets. Garbage bags.
And I paid it without thinking twice.
In that moment, the pain was so real that the value felt obvious. I did not care what it looked like. I did not care what it cost. I cared about staying warm and getting through the night.
That is supply and demand in its purest form.
When the pain is high enough, people will always pay a premium. They are not buying the product. They are buying relief. They are buying safety. They are buying a way out of discomfort.
Every great startup is built on that exact moment. The moment when someone is cold and tired and desperate for a solution, and your product becomes the garbage bag that saves their night.
If you want people to pay for what you are building, solve a real pain. Feel their discomfort. Understand the urgency. And build the thing that makes them say yes without hesitation.
Solve a real pain and people will pay real money.
“What do you mean Stalin was justified in shooting kulaks during a food crisis and kulaks are to blame for causing it?”
“You can also guarantee profits by creating pain and then selling relief.”
It really is impossible to tell apart the real and the parody accounts on LinkedIn.
This could just as well have been a Ken Cheng post.
Lines like ”The moment when someone is cold and tired and desperate for a solution, and your product becomes the garbage bag that saves their night.” are definitely too on the nose.
“The night I paid twenty dollars for a garbage bag” sounds like someone in group therapy at rehab would say while describing the moment they realized their addiction had hit rock bottom and that they needed to get clean.
The third Triagon was born of Death. It saw that the world was radiating excess energy. It wanted to put great things into motion. But greatness wasn’t possible without value. The first transaction.
It took it’s blade and cut a large hole into the boundary, creating a sudden flash of high volume transactional power. And just for a moment things seeped value into themselves, assuming souls. The second transaction.
The hole was quickly mended, and the overpowering transmission of value was cut short. But in that moment the seed of primordial financial might was planted, and the world took on it’s transactional form. Conflict and discord emerged, and the third Triagon was ecstatic. The third transaction.
When the pain is high enough, people will always pay a premium. They are not buying the product. They are buying relief. They are buying safety. They are buying a way out of discomfort.
I once seen a ad of a tourist company that said that life only exist outside of a “comfort zone”. I hate this term so much it’s unreal, every time i hear it, it’s part of a lecture that you should suffer for some rich fuck becoming richer and maybe you will get enough crumbs from their high grace to survive another month in misery.
daydreaming about profiting on the worst material conditions imaginable to man is definitely a healthy way to go about life.
I feel like I’m punching down by criticizing LinkedIn posts because this whole thing reads like a self-own. Garbage poncho dude exploited an transient arbitrage moment and this LinkedIn Bro thought he got a Harvard Business degree. How does this guy get inspired by garbage ponchos but completely miss how poncho seller found his market? I guess that’s why he’s an inspired LinkedIn bro instead of a garbage poncho seller himself.
I remember standing there, soaked and shivering, while a guy walked by selling garbage bags for twenty bucks each. Not ponchos. Not jackets. Garbage bags. And I paid it without thinking twice.
Unlike the author, this dude looked at the weather report and exploited the author’s lack of preparation. I once heard a national park rescue worker say that Westerners are so accustomed to controlled environments they get themselves into all sorts of trouble, like brazenly driving through a blizzard and getting stuck, or (in this case) not looking at the weather report and bringing a poncho.
Every great startup is built on that exact moment.
Buddy, nobody is buying $20 garbage bags on the regular. A single arbitrage moment does not make a business.
MF is creating the diamond-water paradox in real life.
I’m somehow logged into Linkedln! But I never logged in and I never used that site! What the fuck! It’s blocking cookies time.
-–
Edit
I suspect they had a dialog box right in the middle of the screen with a message like “Do you want to log in with google?” and I clicked that by accident when I was distracted.
