Marketing folks are famous for always saying that “sex sells.” It’s true, of course.
But what is under discussed, broadly, is that fear sells the most. Fear of missing out on an investment deal. Fear of losing a potential relationship. Fear of losing a loved one.
Perhaps I’ve grown too cynical over time, but the pattern is so predictable that it really requires studying.
If you’re am ambitious guy who wants to go to the moon? That is a noble and beautiful idea. But you’ll never get funding.
Wernher von Braun wanted to develop a rocket to take people to the moon, originally. But first he was a famous Nazi for developing the V2 rocket designed to obliterate London into submission during WWII. That got funding real fast from the Reich.
Of course, we in the United States gave him clemency so he could ultimately help us build the Saturn V and get us to the moon. But the initial funding was of course, defense related.
Defense can be an economic concept of course. Bitcoin was created in 2008 during the near collapse of the western financial system and all its banks. Bitcoin sold, as a concept, really well. And it continues to this day with world events. The upward price has allowed an entire ecosystem of entrepreneurs to try and build companies around it.
Fear finances everything.
The Hubble telescope, that magnificent instrument that showed us breathtaking views of our universe? It was funded by, yet again, the defense department. Because before we wanted to look at the stars, we wanted to look down at the earth, to deploy telescopes that could count how many ICBMs the Russians deployed during the cold war. The science and optimistic parts of this were just the side project of the main project — how not to get killed by the Russians.
Before the understanding of radiation and its importance in imaging and treating cancers, we had a lot of that understanding due to the need to develop the atomic bomb. (Definitely watch the upcoming Oppenheimer movie).
Before TikTok and Google and Wikipedia that the internet enabled? Of course it was a DARPA project to create a distributed network to create the internet that would survive a nuclear strike from the Soviet Union.
I can go on, and on. But not only does fear finance everything. Fear sells.
I was talking to a good high school friend about this crazy side project I had about this residential drone defense system, which could identify drones in your suburban house’s airspace and take it down using EM jamming. It would be expensive, he said.
So I called up a family member and told them about the idea, and they said no way.
But, but…
I posited — say someone was using a drone to fly over your pool, take pictures of you or whatever else you are doing, or just figure out when you leave for the grocery store so then the bad guys can rob you…
Would you buy it then? Yep was the answer.
Fear always sells. So it became clear. I’m not selling high end technology, what I’m really doing is selling fear. That’s unfortunate, but I don’t make the rules in this world.
