The Purple Cow Tribe in Software

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I’m a big fan of Seth Godin (who isn’t?). And one of his best books is the The Purple Cow which has a simple enough story line: you don’t look at ordinary things (the run of the mill black and white cows) you look and talk about remarkable things (the purple cows). So to find success in any business you should aim for the remarkable - and that applies to marketing and it applies to product offering. Couple this idea with his other big idea about tribes laid out in yet another of his best sellers Tribes and you have the magic formula for any software startup success (IMHO).

Purple cow + Tribes = Successful software


The problem

At this day and age we are just inundated with options. Thanks to the ease of digital offerings and the speed of the Internet we are just spoilt for choice. Online food ordering? There’s at least a dozen in your neighbourhood, buying clothes online? you probably have a hundred that’s just a click away. This list is endless. So if you are to bring out a new product in this mix, you are lost immediately in the noise. You don’t stand a chance. It’s extremely difficult to get noticed and even harder to get people to pay you for your software products. Free is the norm. Consumers expect almost everything digital to be easy, free and perfect.

In this crazy state of things you cannot make a product that’s ordinary and still make it big. But on the other hand it’s extremely difficult (or expensive or both) to make a unique remarkable product.

So how what do you do?

The solution using Seth’s two idea is to make something that would appeal to only a small group of people. Your software would be useless for 99% of the consumers but maybe 1% would find it super useful. Sounds counter-intuitive, but that’s how things are - if you tried to make a software that would appeal to 99% of consumers you’d either have to make it over the top complicated to appeal to different people’s needs or make it so useless that no one finds it worth the time. So going back to the idea, you make something that’s super useful for 1% - and then that 1% starts talking about your software, they would find it remarkable and they would become your “super fans”. You would then create a tribe. A tribe of people who relates to your software and would keep coming back to it.

What do you think? Not convinced? Read the book or at least check out some of Seth’s many videos and see if those change your mind.