5 /5 Matt Richter: My wife, my dog and I stopped in as we wandered Stanford Shopping Center. I had a pretty simple question: whats it cost to get into Omega watches? 19 years ago, my wife bought me an entry level Seamster in stainless steel. I think it was $1500. Besides learning that there is no Omega at that price point anymore, I spent 30 min + looking at some amazing watches. The sales woman knew I wasnt going to buy, but still took the time to show me, and let me handle, watches from about $8k to a high of $16.5k. While I think one might be able to buy most of a city block in Detroit for that price, and paying more than 2 times the cost of the last three used cars Id purchased combined for that one piece, she knew what she was doing. She was planting seeds. Maybe theyd grow, maybe not.
My last job was as a COO of an Ai start up. If itd made it to Series A with me still at the helm, sure, Id have bought myself a nice way to expensive watch. It would have cost less than the rounding error on my new found wealth. Sadly, its not gonna pan out, so no sale today.
But who knows, the next job might, and the seed may grow. If it does, Ill be back. And it wont be to just browse.