
Ask HN: How do you explain completely new products? - daenz
I&#x27;ve been working on a product for the last few months and I am finding it very difficult to explain to people. It&#x27;s very innovative, and there isn&#x27;t anything out there like it, so people don&#x27;t have much to relate it to. But it does solve a real problem, and once people understand what it does, they have an &quot;ah-ha!&quot; moment, love the idea, and want to use it immediately.<p>But it takes me multiple minutes to explain it to anyone before I get to that point. They have to focus on what I&#x27;m saying, and very often I need to show them a demo for a few minutes before they get it. I&#x27;ve tried distilling the content to a short pitch, but the resulting pitch is too vague for anyone to understand what the product is actually doing. It needs the multi-minute explanation and demo.<p>This roadblock of explaining the product is going to kill me. What are some techniques I can use to hone in on this explanation? How do I test them? Are there products out there that are very complicated and do the explanation effectively?
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ColinWright
> _Are there products out there that are very complicated and do the
> explanation effectively?_

Short answer ... no. If what you have is genuinely different then you won't be
able to explain it quickly.

My suggestion is not to concentrate on what it does, or how it does it, but on
the person's problem that will be solved. Do they know they have the problem?
If so then highlight their pain, then promise to fix it. That provides the
hook for them to want to know more, and to invest the next very small slab of
time to see how you might be able to help.

Try it on me, my email is in my profile.

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tucaz
Without knowing what the product is, it is very hard to know if you or others
are the problem.

If the product is that complex that it takes an expert to recognize the
problem it is trying to solve then you are the problem. There is no point in
trying to explain what string theory will fix to a layman’s. They can’t
benefit from it and they won’t use it. You have to talk to the right
customers.

If the product is meant to the general public and you can’t explain it, then
you are the problem.

I can’t think of a single thing that exists today that would be hard to
explain to anyone in a few sentences unless I’m talking about the solution
itself and all it’s intricacies.

Can’t you share what it is? If it’s that complex I bet people won’t even be
able to copy it.

If you can’t, how about you invert the thinking and instead of telling what it
can fix, assume everybody already uses it and what would they lose if your
product went away.

If we take planes away we would lose the ability to travel great distances in
little time. If penicillin went away, people would die from mundane diseases.
Something like that.

