Selling the Future

The art of getting people to invest in your version of the future.

We know the future.

Even if they are not conscious of it, most people will have an idea of what they think the future will look like. I would place a heavy bet that this imaginary place does not look much different than present reality with a few special effects thrown in. More Avengers and less Bladerunner. After all, it is incredibly hard to think ahead in new, creative ways. Our brains would much rather copy and extrapolate than innovate.I mean, why is a ‘flying car’ even a thing? A car is a car. I doubt flying personal transportation will look anything like a car, but it is just so much easier to conform the future to a reality that we can relate to.

Today: execution is everything.
Tomorrow: expectation is everything.

In order to help create the future, you need to be able to convince other people that your expectation of what lies ahead is interesting, feasible, or even better — likely. One small step for cars, one giant leap for rocketsTesla is one of the most overvalued stocks out there, based on tangible output. Why do people keep investing? Because Tesla [Elon], is awesome at taking the future and presenting it to us in an easy to digest fashion. Even if they can only deliver on half of their promises they still capture the general public with awe-inspiring moments at surprising regularity.In order to be successful in pushing boundaries you need this hype. People have to be interested enough in your future that they will invest their time in waiting for it. Example: Tesla had been teasing a Semi truck for a while. Even regular people were pretty hyped about it — a semi truck. During the event Elon surprise-unveiled a sporty roadster with such amazing performance figures it is set to shake up the entire industry. Cue the shock and internet maelstrom. The dust hadn’t even settled before Elon was on Twitter promising that an even faster model was coming later (already sometime *after* 2020). Neat I guess. Drunk on attention, he continued hinting even farther into the seems-ridiculous future with talk of rocket-cars. Attention for this last post dropped off significantly as he pushed farther beyond his followers imagination. Lesson? Go far, but not too far…reign it in Mr. Musk.*See spy shot aboveIn the end, that event generated millions of interactions from onlookers, many of which Tesla will need to buy its Model 3 car — good hype.

The Issue with Crypto

One area where people have largely failed to capture the right amount of hype (until recently) for the future is in cryptocurrencies. Right now you have many opinions being thrown around, but two camps can be heard loudest. Those that think coins and tokens are going to be the only things around with each one worth crazy amounts, and those that think cryptocurrencies only role is for scum to purchase ill gotten goods on the dark web. In reality crypto has a bright future, but it needs to be packaged up in a way that uses what we have today to lead the general public to that shiny tomorrow. Blockchain tech needs to find its Elon Musk.

No regular person wants to hear crypto-extremists talk about how all fiat currency is doomed or how bitcoin is mined or how long it will take to break the encryption.

People want want to understand how their lives will be different, and hopefully improved. Explain to them how it will make travel easier, transactions faster, and reduce product costs by getting rid of middlemen. Then tell them it won’t fix all our problems and to avoid ICOs like the plague.Not everyone should be pitching the ‘could be’ or ‘with your support’ types of products that we so frequently today. Consumers like a mix of available today and available tomorrow. The modern attention span is not very long, if you keep an idea going for long enough positive momentum starts to slip. Hopefully we will see more crypto companies be able to ship interesting products in under a year, these will be the standouts that start looking like true businesses to actual investors.

Exceptions

Sometimes the key to raising a serious amount of money is just attacking a problem that most people want solved or one that seems like fantasy. Take Magic Leap for example. A startup that is promising to deliver the future of mixed reality through a head mounted display. They have been promoting teasers of their future for years now without showing the public what they are really working on (other than teasing some development goggles). They have raised $2.3 billion dollars and currently have hundreds of open positions. Calling that impressive is an understatement. This situation is not ideal though — time has a funny way of working against you. User anticipation of initial products will be unrealistically high when the runway is longer. Users will be more critical of any bugs and design flaws, even if the product is from a brand new company. This wait-and-hold approach works well if the company can truly deliver a world-class first product, otherwise a leaner model will almost always be more rewarding.Magic Leap goggles promo image

From 0 to 0.75

Making an truly never-seen-before product carries extreme risk; it is a much smarter bet to make something that is almost new. Most successful products fall into this category, even if they are famed for their disruption. Go browse through Angel List — The number of truly disruptive companies being started is incredibly small, and 90%+ of those will fail.I will end with a winning strategy: Be on your users side. Attack a problem that people are just starting to have. Paint them a bleak picture of a future where this problem is commonplace, and then offer your solution to prevent it from ever taking place. Then after the money starts coming in you just have to hope you are right!