On successful products

People, books, and podcasts say that a successful product solves a problem for users, and this is widely regarded as common truth.

I tend to agree that products need to solve problems, but the more important thing is that products must make money to allow the business to exist. This is often forgotten when we are deep in the craft of product work.

There are successful products that made no money at first. Instagram had no revenue when Facebook (now Meta) bought it for $1B in 2012. But that only worked because someone else paid the bills, and the money came later from ads.

Does it mean that we should focus only on business? No, focusing mainly on business may cause harm to the user experience, which can lead to bad business results (negative feedback loop).

The above means that we have to always balance three things:

• The product solves problems for users
• The users pay for the product
• The users know about the product (marketing)

If you check the things above, what is the most important thing?

If the product solves problems or people know about it, but nobody pays, your product will not last because you run out of money.

If you solve “The users pay for the product”, you have money to make the product better, and you have money to put the product in front of more people (positive feedback loop). It ultimately means that your product will last, and can be successful.

My take is then: know how you make money (and how much) before you build, not after.