Ford's $3.76 Billion Mistake. Don't Rush to Build.

The Ford Edsel was one of the worst product failures in the history of the auto industry. The blunder of this one car cost Ford about $350 million in 1957, equal to about $3.76 billion today (based on inflation calculators). This loss was avoidable. Hear the lesson for your business.

Key idea: Don't focus on getting millions of dollars of investment to build a product. Instead, first build the right thing. You have to understand your market, their pains, and their perceptions. Brands are emotional and so are purchase decisions; logic comes later to justify why we chose. That's just how the human brain works.

Plus: the story of Buffer's product launch shows how you can validate your product idea for free before you spend money building it. I may have gotten a couple details wrong as this was from memory but here's the scoop: Idea to Paying Customers in 7 Weeks: How We Did It (Buffer)

Topics:

• Ford Edsel - the famous marketing blunder that cost $350 million in 1957 (about $3.76 billion in 2023 dollars)
• For context: For the fiscal year 2020, Ford spent $5.7 billion on research and development (R&D) expenses. It is worth noting that this figure includes R&D spending for all of Ford's products and services, not just its cars.
• Buffer validated their product with a landing page that was nearly free before spending money to write any code
• Calendly is a self-funded startup that reached unicorn status, valued at about $3 billion today. No initial funding. Just solving a problem that was validated by the market: that scheduling meetings via email was arduous = real pain point

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