Your next product is a community

And why it matters

The iPhone product is at the core of Apple, but what exactly is the “product”? Is it a phone with a camera and a touch screen? Does it include the experience of managing communications, music, and photos in iOS? And, what about the friendly faces at the Apple Store that help us pick out, get started with, and support our iPhone? Your definition of a product like the iPhone has a big impact on how you go about building a product. So how do we think differently about product development when we realize that products must be created in the minds of people.

Working in an emerging growth business you quickly realize that your product is central to your existence. In the case of a tech company, your entire team is tied to the product.

• Your developers spend their days coding software for your product.
• Your sales team sells the product to customers and generates revenue for the business.
• The product team seeks to balance customer development with insights from your sales team and the efforts of your developers.
• Not to forget, your product is closely tied to your intellectual property.

In addition, when we speak about startups with other founders, with investors, or in the media, we often refer to our products. For the early stage company, we hang out and talk about how our products will change the world. We speak about Minimum Viable Products (MVP) (read more about the Lean Startup methodology) and how we are iterating and learning about our product. Later, as we throw ourselves into fundraising, seed financing rounds or a Series A round, we are faced with references to Product/Market Fit — this alluring stage when a business takes off as a money-making machine for you and the investors. Read Fred Wilson’s insightful posts on this.

Defining the “Product”

Yet, it is striking how little time we spend talking about what a product actually is. The product is this imaginary creature that we all know, identify, and sell, but that we never define. If we do try to explain what we mean by “product,” we generalize, make assumptions, or simply talk in circles.

For instance, sometimes, a product is referenced as a set of features: “You get x, y, and z features with my product.” But which features exactly relate to the product? Who decides? Is one feature enough or do we need more? How many features? Also, does a product just comprise features or does it include messaging or a customer’s experiences and use cases around the features? Think ads, search result listings, or the work product stemming from using the features. What about communications between your team and your customers, the on-boarding process, the purchasing experience, or the process of customers sharing experiences with other customers? Similar questions arise when we talk about products as corresponding to a certain problem, or set of problems.

Other times we define a product as a process. The Lean Startup MVP is a process of iteration that results in a proof of your hypothesis. But what are you really iterating? Is it the problem statement, your solution, its presentation, or your team and its work product?

When we define a product in relation to a market we frequently end up being circular. The concept Product/Market Fit is often used to describe that there is some unsatisfied demand for a product on a market. The unspoken assumption is that the product can exist and be conceptualized separate from the market. But can a product exist without a market? Or does a product with no demand still exist on a market?

The Social Product

For these and other reasons, I have started thinking about products from an identity perspective. By identity perspective, I mean that a product is a social construct. To use an analogy, I like Benedict Anderson’s definition of a nation as an “imagined community” that is always limited and sovereign (Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 1991). Anderson states that the community is imagined, because participants in the community will never meet. It is limited because the community presupposes the existence of other communities. And it is sovereign, since it seeks to govern itself. Notably, Anderson asserts that nations emerged among people working with language. As they experienced a feeling of community, they sought to identify history, internal similarities or outside differences, and common goals.

Applied to products, the idea that a product is a social construct opens some interesting possibilities. First, it helps explain the importance of a story around your product. In this narrative you want to explain how the founders have these certain experiences and qualities that make your product special. You have identified a problem or set of problems that you are solving and that other people may not even believe exist. Moreover, your product is part of a larger vision of change that you want to share with customers. Once your product has solved the problems you set out to solve, an evolution will occur for your customers. Your product is the catalyst for this change. A product encapsulates all these concepts and importantly invites customers to share in the journey.

Second, a product can only exist in relation to other products. For every product, you go through an exercise of branding. You start by naming your product, getting a URL for your business where people can learn about or experience your product, and then you create packaging — a physical or digital representation of your product. These are identifiers for your products unique characteristics and for what others are not.

Internal branding is important, but the true magic of products occur when prospects, customers, competitors, or random people start comparing your product to other products. “How are you different from x?” they ask you. What they want to hear is that you are unique, cheaper, better, or, ideally, all of the above. This is great since it means your product potentially represents something of value to them. Put differently, the problem your product solves is always already solved, knowingly or unknowingly, by someone, in some fashion, and your product is valuable to the people that identify with this problem. You could say that when compared to other products, your product becomes real.

Third, the identity perspective indicates the key role of customers to your product. Customers do not only pay for your product, but they help conceptualize it. Customers share in your product — join in your imagined community. Early adopters will buy the product in its rough shape because they want to be part of the change that is coming. Customer references serve as social proof that your product is trusted by others, while customer logos on your website signal that you are part of other identities and they are part of your identity. You can similarly convey to customers a feeling of exceptionalism through limiting the availability of your product or, with respect to consumer products, convey belongingness in a consumerist society.

Finally, where products are social constructs, someone always creates them. This insight underlies the value of your team. Every day you talk and share ideas that feed into your product. A brilliant team is likely to create a brilliant product. A dysfunctional team will create a dysfunctional product. When you add the dimensions of marketing, customer success, and customer feedback and ratings to your product, it takes on a life its own. You understand the importance of managing how people speak about your product and why it is helpful engaging users before you change your terms of service, packaging, or the color of your new “follow” button.

Conclusion

What does this all mean? Maybe next time you talk about your product you will take a step back and try to see beyond features, problems, and packaging. Try to think about how your product relates to other products, how customers experience your product, and about how your team functions and how you all speak about the product. Also, don’t make yourself blind by staring at Mixpanel and KissMetrics. They have few answers to building successful products — it is just raw data without qualitative context. To really understand your product, you need to share in your customers’ experience of your product.