We stand at a point in time where we’re fortunate enough witness to some of the most amazing technological advances in history unfold right before our eyes. Every year something incredible is built or an amazing idea is realised. The companies involved are innovating in every aspect of life in an effort to be both original and disruptive.
That’s one end of the scale. On the other end, you can buy a black v-neck shirt in one click.
It doesn’t end there though, more startups are starting to fill up this end of the spectrum. Want to bother someone but have nothing to say? Send your friend a Yo. Want some pizza? Press a button and the Push for Pizza app will deliver it in 30 minutes or less.
This new wave of single function companies is generating headlines, attracting investment and inspiring others to do the same. The latest startup squib to join-in is the BlackV Club, which, as you guessed, sells nothing but black v-neck shirts. In one click. Not blue, not green, not round-necked, just black v-neck. In one click.
University of Pennsylvania graduates Edward Lando and Yagil Burowski are the brains behind the project and are confident that they’ve found a gap in the market. Yagil explained the thinking behind the project to me: “You enter a store and there’s so much variety. People come up to you and they ask you questions, you have to make decisions, it’s horrible.”
“So we did something pretty radical, we just drove down to
If you think this idea is absurd, you’re right. It is absurd. But Edward and Yagil are 100% serious, and they’ve targeted a key demographic to sell their v-necks to. The tech elite.
Tech bigwigs in the San Francisco area, as Lando and Burowski explain, are far too busy to concern themselves with clothes shopping.
“One of the realisations we had it that a lot of very busy and successful people sometimes wear the same things everyday. Mark Zuckerberg does that, the president does that and it’s sort of one less thing to worry about.”
“There is the paradox of choice and we have the same experience sometimes when ordering from restaurants. If I see 40 options on the menu I freak out. I prefer a menu that has 3 options.”
What Lando and Yagil are touching on, but don’t explicitly say, is something psychologists call decision fatigue. Something that powerful people apparently can find themselves suffering from after a long day of being important. In an interview with Vanity Fair, president Obama said that he tries to avoid making decisions on what he’s eating or wearing because he has too many other decisions to make.
Whether decision fatigue is a common problem or not, It’s certainly trendy to offer a reduced service at the moment. Restaurants and pop-up eateries like to offer a limited amount of dishes, in some cases just one or two. Why wouldn’t this work in the tech world? What’s successful in tech is very much driven by the Zeitgeist. Just ask Or Arbel, founder of instant messaging app Yo, or the five teenagers who developed Push for Pizza, the one click pizza delivery app.
Yagil and Lando understand this, just like the Yo and Pizza guys do. They know the idea isn’t a game changer or a world beater. During the interview, the entrepreneurs were throwing around phrases like “passion” and “philosophy”, but it’s clear they see the comedy value in this and they’re willing to entertain it. It’s simple and a bit silly, but it will probably work.
For the most part, the duo are looking to get some big promotion from the richest people in tech. They say that they already have some famous clients who are interested in replacing their wardrobe with a rack of black v-necks. They refused to say who, but when I asked if the top dogs at Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and others had joined their club, Lando responded with “no names, but it pretty much covers everything you've asked”.
Will it work? More than likely. It will be popular for a period of time and it might fade once the initial hype dies down. Just as the trend of simplicity will bow-out when everyone else starts making companies like “push for pretzels” and the “green y-fronts club”.
