Very true. Most product roadmaps start leaning into the chorus of customer requests in the best case and can become very service oriented towards the loudest and typically highest paying customer set in the worst. The former results in a product-for-few and the latter can turn into product-for-one.

I tried Yammer today which was optimized for the first inch and not for the first mile. Table stakes of user on-boarding in place but the strategic first mile optimization of pre-loaded interesting historical content from company’s tweets, blogs and employee stories was absent. FTU experience has to suck in those wandering souls and enroll them. I felt like I was in an empty house. And the product lost me to the other-most-interesting-feed.