The headline on this post sounds a little obvious. I had the same reaction at first to a Dave Winer post about “hot products.” Here’s the money quote:
Imho, having started two companies — one that failed and one that succeeded, and watched dozens of others over 30 years, the difference is the ones that succeed have a hot product that lots of people want, and the ones that fail don’t.
Of course its better for a product to be great vs. not great — especially on the web where barriers are harder to construct and ideas can move so fast. Obvious right? But sometimes the obvious can be eluded, even when that’s not what you’re setting out to do.
Winer was posting in response to a round of discussion about what makes startups work or fail. Calcanis had his list of 17 things you can do in a startup to save money (one tip: 2 monitors for everyone!). There were critques. Arrington weighed in on the value in hiring the write people as a key element. There was a lot of blogosphere excitement about some rather non-controversial stuff. Hire good people. Don’t waste money. Ok.
How good product is cuts through all that. Not to say you don’t need to watch your spending, etc. but just that the product was the real differentiator between success and failure.
I’d add a important related point though. Its not only that a great product trumps all. Its also similarly obvious, but elusive how often the simplicity of a product is viewed as less of a priority. Simplicity drives usage. We’ve all seen the examples: Ipod. Google, Craigslist, Etc. On and on. I’ve personally seen it a Yahoo! a ton — especially here in my own experience.
Sticking to the stone cold fundamentals works. Over and above everything you can do to drive success, the product is the obvious key that is often missed. Then secondly within the product itself, drop dead simplicity shouldn’t be overlooked.
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