The market doesn't care about your feelings
jasonleow • 9 Mar 2025 •
I used to think if I worked hard, cared about quality, and made a great product of high quality, customers will come, and I will get rich.
But the market doesn’t care about your feelings.
It doesn’t care about how hard you worked.
It doesn’t care about the ideals you bring to the product.
What customers care about is the value they get. Does it solve their problem? Is it at a price point they can accept?
If—a big if here—the customers happen to care about your hard work, if they happen to enjoy paying for quality, then there’s a fit to your ideals.
But not always. It depends on customers, problem, use case, market, context.
Ultimately, the market doesn’t care about you.
They care about themselves.
The market is what is it.
If people are playing and buying it despite it being “crap”, then the value they are getting is coming from something else.
It could be loyal fans.
It could be influence.
It could be nostalgia.
Maybe you say, I won’t put out low quality stuff. That’s not me. It’s bad for reputation. It’s not being fair to customer. I wouldn’t build something like that, and yes, there are customers who care about quality in some niches. Then play in those games instead.
But there are customers and markets who don’t care about purist ideals.
The point is, play the tune your customers want.
Play to the game, not invent your own made up rules in the game and then wonder why you lost.
I know, because I did that, and lost.
Comments
Actually it’s not mutually exclusive, I feel. You can care about your customer and deliver it as part of a good service but still be objective when assessing the business. The key is being alert to self-projecting, and expecting reciprocation. My degree of care alone shouldn’t mean profit is guaranteed.
This is true, but I feel like it can lead to bitterness and resentment towards the market. Instead, I like to think of it this way:
I care about serving the market and I want to serve my people well.
I want to connect with people who want to see me succeed in what I do.
I want to serve an audience whose company I enjoy, who appreciate what I have to offer, and who won’t turn on me if there are shortcomings in what I offer. Instead, they are patient and offer valuable feedback to help me improve.
To reach this, we have to understand our audience and serve them well, but we also want to connect with people who have goodwill towards us and do care about how we feel.