alt Hacker NewsIt’s a great question, but I don’t think the article answers it.
Not in any academic sense, but in a real-world sense a software product is something that as a user you can rely on to solve a problem. Rely is doing the heavy lifting in that sentence.
You can rely on a vendor’s product if (a) they’re going to be around for a long time, otherwise the investment into adopting it isn’t worth it; (b) the vendor is committed to solving your problem in an ongoing way - meaning they understand enough of the domain (ideally more than you do) that they’re going to be a partner even as your own needs evolve; (c) they deliver the product in a dependable way - high uptime and security.
So it comes down to “can you depend on this software over time?”
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I hate the ‘product’ word. In the 90’s I was involved in a travel startup, and the software people would be talking about ‘product’ meaning the website that we where building, and the travel people meant what we where offering in the way of hotels, insurance, flights and excursions.
The word ‘product just left everyone confused.
If one uses a word like platform, application, prototype, offering, ‘products’ this makes it clearer than just the generic ‘product’. It’s even better if goal is applied as well. For example Flight finder Application, or Video Playback Platform.
A product is much more than the software and its reliability. The business side is just as big of a lift. You need to build a business, not just a product. A business includes understanding the value proposition, not just a potential solution in the form of a tool. It includes understanding how the software fits in to the target customer's workflow, and how it provides real value. You need to be able to communicate that value proposition to the customers, investors and your employees, amongst other stakeholders. Later, this transforms into understanding the sales cycle and how to use marketing to grow your users. The business side has always been the hard part. Software was always easy to build. The hard part is knowing what to build that really provides value.