Kunal Shah: Core Human Motivations [The Knowledge Project Ep. #141]

Since the cost to provide utility is dropping, business models are evolving from rent-seeking to skin-in-the-game. Instead of just providing a service (utility), companies need to invest in their customers (vanity)

Only free products work in India; subscription products fail miserably. They refuse to pay extra for convenience or entertainment. Anecdote: Kunal says that even wealthy people spend hours shifting around their phone storage as opposed to purchasing a couple of dollars worth of cloud storage. Business example: Netflix initially failed in India by a... See more

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is much different in Asian culture compared to Western society. Example: Many people in India have never worked for an hourly wage, so they don’t know the exact value of their time. So as a result, convenience products do not perform well as they do in Western culture. Saving people time does not resonate. Continue readi... See more

There’s so much advantage in life that comes from being willing to look like an idiot in the short-term

Vocabulary is a unique curse. We suffer from every word we know. If you didn’t know the definition of the word “ugly,” nobody could ever hurt you with it.

We like surprises in our media consumption but not in our lives. We only get dopamine hits from surprises that don’t harm us

Everything that feels soulful in life is inefficient. Standardized things are easier to scale, but non-standardized things are harder to destroy Standardizing is the enemy of soulfulness

People give you time or money where their core motivations are mostly met, or when there is a hope for their motivations to be met.

If you can not distill your idea to a transmissible conversation over dinner, it’s not going to spread