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Moving from a feature to a product to a company

This post from Seth Levine discusses the path of a startup along this continuum:

Features provide specific point value to users. Products stitch together related features into bundles that are essentially universal in their need across the problem set you are solving (put another way, if each of your users buys your “product” for a different reason you’ve probably just created a feature set, not a true product). Companies have product that is broad enough in its use and impact that a huge number of users gain value from it in a market that is both large and where the user need is similar enough to drive broad adoption of the same solution.

It’s an interesting perspective that is worth evaluating your current organization against.  Are you in the feature, product or company phase?  Rapid application development with libraries and modern frameworks makes it really easy to move from a feature to a product phase, even though some organizations that stay in the feature space–something like this store locator app or a data product like Mattermark where extra work is required to gain value.  We certainly found that when we started The Food Corridor that features alone weren’t going to be defensible or sustainable, so we moved quickly on to being a product.

It’s also worth noting that “Company” status for a VC like Seth is probably a lot larger than a sustainable SaaS company which can feed a small team and provide a lot of value to a niche market–companies like Small Farm Central or Fileboard.  You don’t have to be a “Company” to be a success, in other words.  You don’t even have to be a “Product”.  But knowing where you are in the continuum can help you define your focus.

One thought on “Moving from a feature to a product to a company

  1. moore says:

    Actually, taking a deeper look at Fileboard, they may be more than a feature.  My apologies: https://fileboard.com/

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