Great products come from the heart
While listening to Jason Calacanis interview Bill Warner during a live TWiST taping, I heard Bill talk about his process for identifying angel investments. He broke it down by saying “Great products come from the heart” and he uses that observation as a primary filter when assessing investment opportunities. While this seems like such a simple investment thesis, it really struck a chord with me.
Great products really do come from the heart; a few examples I can think of are DropBox, Airbnb, Kickstarter and Twitter. They all came from their founders’ hearts. It sounds incredibly cheesy but there’s something about a heartfelt product, particularly a heartfelt consumer product, that comes through so clearly to users. Maybe it’s the novelty, the brand, the voice or all the above but these heartfelt products really do separate themselves from the rest.
The nuances here are really hard to qualify. What do “great” and “heartfelt” mean? Both are hugely subjective criteria to use when classifying products but in my opinion, they fall under the you know ‘em when you see ‘em category. Also,a great product is not the same thing as a successful product. Having a great product isn’t even a necessary condition for having a successful product. There are plenty of successful products that I wouldn’t classify as great (e.g. LinkedIn) and I’m sure you can think of many more examples. But just because a great product isn’t required for success doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying to create one.
From my (limited) experience, it’s so much more fun and rewarding to work on a product that comes from the heart. Working at such a company attracts amazing people, is a continual source of pride and is what keeps you going during the long startup grind.
None of this is to say that all product decisions need to come blindly from what your heart tells you to do. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Product decisions need to leverage analytics, user research, user testing and many more inputs. It’s the genesis of a product that needs to come from the heart because if the product doesn’t start there, it’s highly unlikely to ever tap into it.
I’m lucky to be working on a product, RunKeeper, that certainly came from the heart. We have a long way to go before achieving greatness but we’re starting from a strong foundation and it has made the ride so much more enjoyable.
Are you working on a product that comes from the heart? It’s no guarantee for success but it’s sure as hell a lot more fun and rewarding along the way.
Follow me on Twitter (@jongilman) to hear more thoughts about building products and startups.
