Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Breakthrough Early Adopters Buy for Aesthetic Reasons Rather Than Practical Ones

Mike Maples, Jr. · Mike Maples Jr. - Identifying Startup Pattern Breakers (EP.406) · Sep 16, 2024 · at 54:24

Floodgate founding partner Mike Maples Jr. explains his mental model for how early-stage startups build initial customer movements, drawing on SGI's early relationship with Industrial Light & Magic.

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“They believed in an aesthetically different superior future, and that's why early customers move. They move for aesthetic reasons rather than practical reasons. The same reason that people buy art. They buy into the aesthetic vision of the artist.”

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