What Software Developers can learn from Harley Davidson
Tags: discuss
Published: 2022-08-04 11:54:00

If you want a cruiser type of motorcycle your two primary choices are Harley Davidson and Honda. A Honda will cost you a couple of thousand. A Harley will easily cost you 5 times as much. Still, I'd chose a Harley 7 days of the week, and there are probably millions like me out there.

To understand why, we need to traverse back in time to the 1960s, at which point Harley Davidson was _"just another motorcycle producer"_. However, Harley Davidson was experiencing increased competition from Japanese motorcycle producers, that would _consistently outperform Harley on everything_ - Less expensive, faster bikes, more durable. Whatever parameter you used to measure a Harley towards a Honda with back then, Honda would _consistently win_. Harley Davidson was faced with two options.

1. Go bankrupt for not being able to compete
2. Change their value proposition

## Harley does NOT create motorcycles

The above might sound like a joke, but it's literally true. In order to stay alive, Harley Davidson realised they had to stop defining themselves as a motorcycle producer, and drastically change their value proposition. The way Harley did this change, was to think about themselves as a jewellery producer. Yup, you read correct.

> Harley Davidson haven't created a single motorcycle for 60 years!

Harley Davidson's product is __man jewellery__, literally. Every time I see a Harley, I cannot help myself, I simply have to turn my head and look at it. If you show me a Honda I'm like _"duh"_. There are millions of men like me out there, who would rather pay 5 times the price to have people turn their heads and look at you as you pass them on the streets. This justifies the 5 times larger price in most mens' minds, for the same reasons most people prefer iPhones in favour of Android phones. Android is the Honda of phones, iPhones are the Harley of phones.

> Androids are for people who can't afford iPhones ;)

## What does this have to do with software?

It's really quite simple. Obviously, there's no way we can create _"jewellery software"_. However, if you just copy your competitor's product, your product becomes a _"me too garbage product"_. The world is full of examples of _"me too garbage products"_. Some examples here are DynamoDB and CosmosDB. Both of these products were created exclusively to meet the threat from MongoDB and CouchBase. In isolation they've got no existential right, and they're both inferior in every conceivable way. For crying out loud, CosmosDB doesn't even support partial record updates.

If you want to create a kick ass product though, give me a NoSQL database that can run on my iPhone, or Raspberry PI at least. Or give me a NoSQL database that is 100% compatible with MySQL SQL dialect. These were just dummy examples of course, but intended to get you started thinking outside of the box. The basic idea is to _stop copying other people's ideas_, and create a _unique value proposition_.

## About Aista

Technically [Aista](https://aista.com) is a _"cloud service provider"_. However, we've got as much in common with Azure and AWS as Cirque de Soleil have in common with your average elephant based Circus. If you haven't heard of Cirque de Soleil, you can see a photo from one of their performances below.

![Cirque de Soleil](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/n7lj1ybuzlgrz22a5om7.jpeg)

This creates a niche for Cirque de Soleil where customers will line up for 6 months begging to get a ticket to a show for $1,500, where their _"competitors"_ are charging $15 per show. My primary responsibility as the CEO of Aista is to ensure that nobody working for Aista starts comparing our value proposition to the value proposition of AWS and Azure, because if our employees did, our customers would compare our value proposition to that of AWS and Azure. And if our customers are comparing our value proposition to Azure and AWS, we've lost before we even enter the market. However, fundamentally, at the end of the day, when you want to create software, you've got two choices.

1. Aista
2. Some commodity cloud service provider selling _"me too garbage"_

The same way you've got two options when going to watch a Circus; Cirque de Soleil or _"some poor elephant having been living his life in terrible conditions"_. I would choose Cirque de Soleil 7 days of the week, and I would chose Harley Davidson 7 days of the week, and my bet with the Creator, is that so would most other software developers if only given a choice ...

> STOP PRODUCING ME TOO GARBAGE!!

As to Aista, we don't have time for _"me too garbage"_ because we're too busy implementing the software revolution ;)