The Business of Software blog just posted my latest essay! Here are some excerpts, and you can read the rest there:

Most of you have the ambition to get big. How do you do that? The only way to get big as a product company is for people to buy your product. Preferably a lot of people, for significant amounts of money at a time. Duh!

But why would people buy your product? We know there are products that people don’t buy. We don’t want those – because you can’t get big, or even grow at all. If you look at the revenue line for a product that no one buys – it’s nasty! We don’t like that line!

Revenue Up-And-To-The-Right - That's The Goal 1

 

 Why Do We Get Revenue?

Compare it to our desired revenue line – up and to the right – and accelerating as it goes up. If our product sells like that, it means it’s solving an important problem for some people – important enough that people will pay for the solution.

You can have a beautiful product, beautifully engineered and architected, and totally rocking in usability – but if it doesn’t solve a big market problem – flat line.

But a product can have some warts, not quite work as the user expects all the time, have some typos, use a 1998 style UI – but if it solves a big problem better than anything else – up and to the right.

Read the rest, including thoughts about the real definition of product management (it’s not just about finding problems)  at the Business of Software blog.

About the author

Your host and author, Nils Davis, is a long-time product manager, consultant, trainer, and coach. He is the author of The Secret Product Manager Handbook, many blog posts, a series of video trainings on product management, and the occasional grilled pizza.

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