“But Mom!” the teenager wailed, “I need this. All my friends have ’em, and I don’t. It’s not fair.”
“Sweetie,” Mom replied, “I understand you’re upset. What you’re feeling is your need to belong and have friends. It’s natural. We’re a social species.”
The teenager pursed her lips. “Mom, please, no lectures, not now. I need this. I really, really do.”
“What you need is to have friends, to belong—belongingness. What you want is to have this thing, to show your friends that you and they share values, that you’re one of them, that you belong.”
The daughter stared into her lap and her shoulders heaved.
“Dear,” Mom said quietly. Her daughter looked up. “Go ask your father.”
As she slid from her kitchen stool, a tear-streaked smile spread across the girl’s face. “I love you, Mom.”
Needs and wants are related. Both address a pull, a desire for or to something, and good product developers recognize the differences—for startups working to launch their first products, understanding the distinctions is critical.
A need is a necessity, an urge, a fundamental requirement we feel to satisfy our general well-being and our instinct for self-preservation. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (diagram) presents this well. In the scene above, the daughter feels the psychological need to belong, have intimate relationships, and have friends.
A want, however, is a desire to have or do something. It’s a wish for something. The daughter feels her need for friends, and her strategy is to be someone who’s liked—the hypothesis being that people who are liked have friends. Her tactic, her solution, her want, therefore, is to have what her friends have . . . be it a popular phone, a brand of shoes, piercings, etc., signaling she values the same things as her friends, that she’s one of them, and that she belongs.
The need is the necessity, the want is the solution. (For the product to be a solution, it must be known to customers, which is why companies advertise.) If the image of crying teenagers is not to your taste, try, “I need food, and I want pizza.” Food is the need, and pizza is the solution, the want. Or think of the enthusiast who exclaims, “Wow, this is cool. I can do a lot with this. I want one.” He looks up. “Where can I buy it?”—indeed every startup’s dream.
The Number One Rule for Startups and Product Developers, Generally
As founders, marketers, and product developers, we must understand that every need has existed since time began; our job is to understand these needs and commercialize better solutions—be they goods like new kitchen appliances or services like new amusement parks.
Reflecting on this rule helps us understand three things:
- Because humans have always addressed their needs somehow, every new product, and startup, has competitors. A new product (i.e., solution) competes, favorably or not, against every existing, available, alternative solution. We need to understand how our product, or solution, compares favorably and unfavorably to all competitive solutions.
- Humans resist change. Research shows that for customers to change their habits, a new solution should be at least thirty percent better than its competition—hopefully, lower prices isn’t where the team will hang its hat. For example, in commercial markets, electric bicycles are replacing traditional, pedal-only ones; so, thinking from customers’ and users’ points of view, list, value, and rank the benefits (good and bad) they perceive as they move to electric bikes. On the plus side, electric bikes suggest less effort, faster speeds, and some techno-cool ego satisfaction. On the minus side, there might be concerns with range, charging, weight, safety, and high prices. It seems electric bikes have achieved the thirty percent threshold.
Are there exceptions to this thirty percent requirement? If yes, they’ll prove the rule. Staying with bicycles, think competitive racing, where victories are measured in fractions of a second. A solution that cuts a second from a cyclist’s time is a huge advantage. But what is the net sum of the costs and benefits? From the user’s and customer’s point of view, will this new technology achieve the thirty percent threshold? “One second is amazing,” the team coach says, “but will our regulations allow this? Is it safe? Is it durable? Reliable?” Lastly, the coach asks about pricing. The key question for the startup is: will enough coaches, or their buyers, buy enough units fast enough at the target price before the startup spends all its money? I hope so.
- Finally, reasonable and prompt input from many sources is essential, but quality input from users and customers is crucial. Therefore, we should constantly seek out, speak with, and listen carefully to potential, existing, and former customers, all while keeping an eye on our competitors and suppliers. True, not all customers or suppliers are always correct, and you don’t have to accept everything you learn. Still, you must be receptive and open-minded, constantly tracking your data, and willing to change course as you work to understand customers’ needs and wants.
Stay tuned, next week I’ll tackle the three key marketing questions. So, let’s end with this adage: “There are those who lead, those who follow, and those who wonder what just happened.”
Colorado Technology Ventures coaches and mentors founders and startups.