What Building Product Means for Business
So, you’re a business owner and you’re thinking of building a software product? Cool. Welcome to the club. This is going to be a wonderful and exciting journey, full of navigating intricacies of the unknown. But hey, you’re a business owner and I’m definitely sure that that sounds like your day to day.
What I’m unsure of, is this, do you really know, what building product means for your business? And by asking this, I don’t only mean the building part of it, but what comes after the product is released to the public? You can’t always state the reason of building a product by pitching the product as something that alleviates someone’s pain point, because in reality, what matters is how the business reaps value through that product.
See, building product always mean 2 things:
1. to solve problem strategically, i.e. do things once and apply it everywhere, and
2. to grow the business in a scalable manner, i.e. how to do more with the same number of resources
It goes without saying that those 2 things have always need to be tighten down to how it gives positive impact to the company’s business or, dare I say, to The Book. Because, otherwise, the effort may just go in vain. Something that gets increasingly risky in this age of uncertainty.
Needless to say, even before you jump in to build a product, you have to understand how your business currently (or plan to) make money. Then see, which part of that process should be improved through a software product, whereby the amount of revenue created by that product, should be bigger than the cost of building and maintaining it. Often times, this means generating significant growth in lesser time. Only there you can see the true benefit of being a product-led business.
Of course, being product led isn’t the only way for your business to grow. In other case, your business might be sales driven and still doing great. Or in other case, your business could also be selling software as a commodity and improvement made in your software may not always be have a direct impact to its sales.
As a parting word, please re-evaluate why you’re building a product in the first place and even, ask, do you even have to build one? If yes, then strategically design how much degree will the product affect your overall business flow. There you can ensure that the effort of building, iterating and maintaining a product will not go in vain.
