Latent Demand: Do customers always "know" what they'll buy?

Latent demand is already there, and technology only reveals it

Latent demand is what a customer would prioritise right now if only there were a way, and it exists before any product reveals it. Uber revealed a market far larger than taxis served, made of people who had stayed home only because travel was hard. Founders earn nothing for unblocking a constraint nobody is leaning against, and interviews and pitches cannot find latent demand because it lives inside the customer's world. It has to be felt from the inside, then tested by building supply on a hypothesis about what pull feels like.

Takeaways

• Latent demand exists before the product reveals it. Rob Snyder is fine where he is and never tries to travel, yet he would be in Ohio for dinner instantly if teleportation existed. Taxis constrained would-be riders, and Uber revealed a far larger market of people who had stayed home.
• Demand is knowable only from inside. Rob Snyder says demand is not visible from the outside and is knowable from the inside or by getting lucky. He realised he had been studying his potential customers like an impartial scientist, trying to predict their behaviour instead of feeling what pulls them.
• Interviews will not surface latent demand. Discovery interviews about pain points, and even the Hail Mary question about what someone would pay to solve now, surface active pull but probably not a latent project. Rob Snyder would never name Mexico City, yet he would be there instantly if he could.
• Magical technology earns nothing on irrelevant constraints. Rob Snyder prints about one thing a year, so a printer 100 times better or 1,000 times faster would not move him. Products unblock constraints, but a constraint the customer is not leaning against is worth nothing, however magical the technology.
• Pitching supply gets nods, not demand. Putting an idea in front of people produces pleasant agreement and nothing more, because the idea is unlikely to fit a project on their list. Founders form a hypothesis about what pull feels like and build supply on it, then watch whether anyone acts.
• Latent demand arrives as a burst or wave. Rob Snyder calls Lovable a dam bursting, with many people who would change their website faster if only there were a way. At the frontier of AI agents and the software factory the wave is tiny, and the mainstream sits six to 18 months behind.

Inside a physical therapy practice

1. An HBS student shadowed independent physical therapists and followed them around rather than interviewing them.
2. He tried to buy an independent physical therapy practice to get inside the business.
3. That gave him the practice's profit and loss statement.