Is your product a “must have” or “nice to have”?

http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2009/10/13/is-your-product-a-must-have-or-nice-to-have/

by bhousel • 17 years ago

14 10 17 years ago

entrepreneur.venturebeat.com

edw519• 17 years ago

I always thought it was a mistake to position your business as if your product was a "must have", mainly because it's not.

Treat it as a "nice to have". That will force you to do everything else better.

A lot of people have learned the hard way in the past year that very little is a "must have".

delano• 17 years ago

It's more important as a mental exercise than as absolute advice. Some people put it another way: is your product a vitamin or a painkiller?

For a business to become successful, the product will need to become a must have at some point. If it's not right now, then you need to keep pursuing it until it is.

AlexTheFounder• 17 years ago

Vitamin vs painkiller is a better analogue. Consider Facebook, it isn't really a "must have", but seems to be doing just fine

launic2• 17 years ago

I would say even more, every product has to be first a "nice to have" and hopefully for you to become later a "must have". Nowadays in our society we already can live a very comfortable life, there is no real "must have".

I support my point here saying that we already have a product that saves you money, but not a single person that I have talked about it was impressed by this feature alone. Instead the other way round if they like the product and I tell them about the cost saving it is a serious factor for them to decide to adopt it.

launic2• 17 years ago

The article in my opinion does not say much, but the following paragraph caught my attention:

>>"In the end, the best way to test whether you have a ‘must have’ product is to threaten to take the prototype away from your early users," says Rakowski. "If they don’t riot, start again."<<

Is this really doable? How can you threaten to take the prototype away?

_pius• 17 years ago

Is this really doable? How can you threaten to take the prototype away?

Takeaway: http://blog.tr.im/post/159369789/tr-im-r-i-p

Riot: http://www.google.com/search?q=tr.im+shutdown

Giveback: http://blog.tr.im/post/165049236/tr-im-to-be-community-owned

zaidf• 17 years ago

Another way to test would be to use survey.io: http://startup-marketing.com/free-customer-development-help-...

araneae• 17 years ago

Nice to have. GODDAMMIT. runs off and looks for a real job

quizbiz• 17 years ago

Everything online is merely "nice to have" but we are still capable of becoming dependent on it. ie: google/gmail

Is your product a “must have” or “nice to have”?

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