From gold skateboards to $30,000 email, tapping rich markets reveals endless possibilities for luxury versions of ordinary products

Greg Isenberg is a multi-exit Silicon Valley entrepreneur and owner of Late Checkout product studio. He has:
– Headed Product Strategy at WeWork
– Been an advisor to Reddit
– Founded a startup, Islands, which was sold to WeWork
– Founded 5by, which was sold to StumbleUpon

Interesting Tweets Series: Greg Isenberg

The Tweet

To entrepreneurs looking to start cash-flowing businesses, I remember a friend of mine worth $500M saying: “If you’ve got to sell something, sell it to rich people.” 

It got me thinking about luxury businesses. There are gold plated skateboards for $15,000 (SHUT Skateboards). 

There are toothbrushes for $4200 made of titanium (Reinast). There are smart sleep masks for $300 (Dreamlight Pro). 

Luxury products for just about everything. Observation: Sooner or later, every market ends up introducing a luxury segment.. 

All ordinary products can have extraordinary luxury versions. Sometimes that means better quality, more scarce, more interesting story, more niche or all of the above. And the same is true for services. 

My innovation agency Late Checkout Agency was built on this premise. Max 12 clients per year. We work with companies to innovate and build new products to future proof their businesses. 

Point: average client size is $1M/year. And clients love us. Some tell us we’re too cheap. And the more I understand luxury the more I realize there are layers to luxury. 

Michael Kors is accessible luxury. Gucci is luxury. Chanel is supreme luxury. I think we’re underestimating how many luxury markets can happen. 

We started seeing it with luxury software recently. Superhuman the $30/month email service is now worth $850M. 

Check out the original tweet here