we have been soliciting feedback from investors regarding boxee for the past couple of months.

what we found is that these discussions are a perfect example of the law of diminishing marginal utility:

A law of economics stating that as a person increases consumption of a product – while keeping consumption of other products constant – there is a decline in the marginal utility that person derives from consuming each additional unit of that product.

This is the premise on which buffet-style restaurants operate. They entice you with “all you can eat,” all the while knowing each additional plate of food provides less utility than the one before. And despite their enticement, most people will eat only until the utility they derive from additional food is slightly lower than the original.

For example, say you go to a buffet and the first plate of food you eat is very good. On a scale of ten you would give it a ten. Now your hunger has been somewhat tamed, but you get another full plate of food. Since you’re not as hungry, your enjoyment rates at a seven at best. Most people would stop before their utility drops even more, but say you go back to eat a third full plate of food and your utility drops even more to a three. If you kept eating, you would eventually reach a point at which your eating makes you sick, providing dissatisfaction, or ‘dis-utility’.

our initial discussions with investors were very helpful.
some of the feedback we got made us change things in our pitch, and more importantly helped us focus.

but eventually the dialogue around questions like “how would you compete with <big company x/y/z>?”, “what makes you different from <product x/y/z>?”, “what prevents another company from doing exactly the same thing?” is very limited.
we are starting to bore ourselves with the answers…

getting back to the restaurant metaphor.
our stomachs are quite full.
time for us to order coffee and the check.
go out to smoke, maybe check out the bar scene.
wake up late tomorrow, build an appetite and hit the hottest place in town for brunch.

not sure where i went there with the metaphor…