I've noticed that founders can take one of two approaches when serving their customers. They can either remove beartraps or provide superhero-capes. This post explores beartraps.
Beartraps are obstacles preventing someone from taking a swing. For example it used to be difficult to deploy an ecommerce storefront. In the 90s and early 2000s you needed to know how to code, or pay someone who did, to develop and deploy a custom ecommerce solution. This set the barrier for conducting commerce online extremely high.
I believe one of the greatest, recent beartrap removals was Shopify decimating this barrier to entry in e-commerce. By offering anyone with internet access and a spare $30 dollars a month all the digital tools required to sell online, Shopify has exploded the number of people who fit into the demographic of 'able to start an online business'.
There had been plenty of no-code website builder tools back in 2006. There had also been plenty of payment gateways that allowed you to conduct online credit card transactions, and lastly plenty of web hosting providers. Shopify was the first to successfully bundle and offer what these separate solutions were offering to e-commerce specific practitioners (mostly web developers) and offer one just for merchants.
Shopify's first customers weren't merchants already selling online successfully, their first customers were people who couldn't sell online because they had a beartrap gnawing on their leg. They found online merchants as customers not by finding them, but by enabling them.
Beartraps are obstacles preventing someone from taking a swing. For example it used to be difficult to deploy an ecommerce storefront. In the 90s and early 2000s you needed to know how to code, or pay someone who did, to develop and deploy a custom ecommerce solution. This set the barrier for conducting commerce online extremely high.
I believe one of the greatest, recent beartrap removals was Shopify decimating this barrier to entry in e-commerce. By offering anyone with internet access and a spare $30 dollars a month all the digital tools required to sell online, Shopify has exploded the number of people who fit into the demographic of 'able to start an online business'.
There had been plenty of no-code website builder tools back in 2006. There had also been plenty of payment gateways that allowed you to conduct online credit card transactions, and lastly plenty of web hosting providers. Shopify was the first to successfully bundle and offer what these separate solutions were offering to e-commerce specific practitioners (mostly web developers) and offer one just for merchants.
Shopify's first customers weren't merchants already selling online successfully, their first customers were people who couldn't sell online because they had a beartrap gnawing on their leg. They found online merchants as customers not by finding them, but by enabling them.
So for an individual it's definitely easier to avoid a bear trap. But from the perspective of a founder it's much easier to solve people's beartrap problems.
let me propose a thought experiment for you. Would your newsletter be easier to write for people with painful problems (say sleep or diabettes) or would it be easier to write for people with little painful problems (none of those and are just jolly and zen lol).
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