Why many GOOD products don't succeed
The culprit is that they tried to create a technical solution (More widgets, faster throughput, more pixels, etc) but they didn't either listen to what the customer actually needed or they didn't convert their solution into one that fit into the customer's world.
I was reflecting on this when thinking about our Fleet product at Freedom Robotics. If I were to describe it (As I did when speaking at the RIA AMR Conference a few weeks ago), I would say:
Freedom's Fleet product is focused on enabling robotic platform creators and the companies who leverage large fleets of robots to increase their robotic ROI, lower their downtime and enable continuous improvement in the quality of their services.
That is a lot of business wording - but it is the huge value of having the really robust and scalable infrastructure which we provide. The actual value of the technology itself is zero if it doesn't provide business value.
Art Lebedev, one of my favorite product designers, wrote a blog post called Idea worth minus a million. I highly recommend reading it (Its short). Punchline - most new inventions actually cost more than they are worth in the end.
Many times, technical people try to solve business problems just with technology. And they create something amazing, which technically works but doesn't solve the problem because they don't understand how to actually make it used by the end customer.
How to make a product click
I was just reflecting on the concept of this failure most growing companies make and how much we have focused on driving business value for our customers at Freedom Robotics where we fit into our customer's ecosystems in the right way and don't try to have them fit into ours.
It takes a lot of work to internalize the difference between what a product does and what its true value is. A simple example is Apple.
What do Apple's products do?
They are communications, computation and software products which allow programs to be sold in app-stores and distributed to millions of people.
What is the value of Apple Products?
They are fashion/lifestyle products which make their users feel that they have a specific social status.
The key difference is that what they do has nothing with what the value they provide is, as compared to an equal Android device. Many Android devices have the same level of camera, software and hardware quality as Apple devices.
But, what Apple has done is found a niche which makes people want to use it.
Click?
To get to the click, you need to separate what your product physically does from why people would want to buy it and then test like crazy, actually selling your product and seeing if anyone will use it. If they do, ask them why.
Rahul (Of SuperHuman Email) wrote a very interesting post on First Round about how he found product market fit with their email client.
It takes a lot of work to make a product actually click, but if you start by realizing people will most likely not buy your product for its technical features, but for something else, you are moving in the right direction.
