

Is your product a “must have” or “nice to have”? - bhousel
http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2009/10/13/is-your-product-a-must-have-or-nice-to-have/

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launic
I would say even more, every product has to be first a "nice to have" and
hopefully for you to become later a "must have". Nowadays in our society we
already can live a very comfortable life, there is no real "must have".

I support my point here saying that we already have a product that saves you
money, but not a single person that I have talked about it was impressed by
this feature alone. Instead the other way round if they like the product and I
tell them about the cost saving it is a serious factor for them to decide to
adopt it.

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launic
The article in my opinion does not say much, but the following paragraph
caught my attention:

>>"In the end, the best way to test whether you have a ‘must have’ product is
to threaten to take the prototype away from your early users," says Rakowski.
"If they don’t riot, start again."<<

Is this really doable? How can you threaten to take the prototype away?

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_pius
_Is this really doable? How can you threaten to take the prototype away?_

Takeaway: <http://blog.tr.im/post/159369789/tr-im-r-i-p>

Riot: <http://www.google.com/search?q=tr.im+shutdown>

Giveback: <http://blog.tr.im/post/165049236/tr-im-to-be-community-owned>

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zaidf
Another way to test would be to use survey.io: [http://startup-
marketing.com/free-customer-development-help-...](http://startup-
marketing.com/free-customer-development-help-surveyio/)

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araneae
Nice to have. GODDAMMIT. _runs off and looks for a real job_

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quizbiz
Everything online is merely "nice to have" but we are still capable of
becoming dependent on it. ie: google/gmail

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edw519
I always thought it was a mistake to position your business as if your product
was a "must have", mainly because it's not.

Treat it as a "nice to have". That will force you to do everything else
better.

A lot of people have learned the hard way in the past year that very little is
a "must have".

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delano
It's more important as a mental exercise than as absolute advice. Some people
put it another way: is your product a vitamin or a painkiller?

For a business to become successful, the product will need to become a must
have at some point. If it's not right now, then you need to keep pursuing it
until it is.

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AlexTheFounder
Vitamin vs painkiller is a better analogue. Consider Facebook, it isn't really
a "must have", but seems to be doing just fine

~~~
unalone
I couldn't disagree more. When you start using Facebook, it becomes a must
have. When I went about deleting all my online accounts, it was one of the two
I didn't get rid of. If I got rid of that, I'd lose the most valuable
communications medium I've got.

