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What is a product?

roge.onwrite.app

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Re: What is a product?

#41

Post by bko »

I agree with the point generally but:

> I haven't seen any real competitor of YouTube, or Figma, or Google, or Instagram created solely with AI.

Is a ridiculous set of products to expect competitors for. First all but 1 rely heavily on network effects. YouTube is a low cost provider. Think about it, they provide unlimited high quality video storage for free. They process 500 hours of content every minute. Google and Instagram have a huge network all users benefit from. AI can't help you bootstrap this network.

The only one that's fair is Figma, and considering Figma is down 30% from IPO price (much lower from ending day close), it's fair to say there are competitors to Figma, including the LLMs themselves.

That begs the question: what is product? Is "an app for designers to change style and communicate with developers" the product? Or is the product "to make websites look pretty and well organized"? The former, Figma is great. But if the product is the latter, LLMs are a real threat. No one would bother building a "better Figma" today, why would they? They would just solve the problem Figma purports to solve

Re: What is a product?

#42

Post by uxhacker »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #9

It’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 committ…

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.

Re: What is a product?

#44

Post by jeremyjh »

bko wrote: post #41

I agree with the point generally but: > I haven't seen any real competitor of YouTube, or Figma, or Google, or Instagram created solely with AI. Is a ridiculous set of products to expect competitors for. First all but 1 rely heavily on network effects. YouTube is a low cost provider. Think about it, they provide unlimited high quality video storage for free. They process 500 hours of content every minute. Google and…

That list is a pretty high bar but you can make it as low as you like and it’s still crickets.

Re: What is a product?

#45

Post by Applejinx »

mft_ wrote: post #8

This just reads like someone's cross at the AI hype and wanted to take a shot, but missed. The underlying point --that network effects exist and determine the success of a product-- has always been the case, long before AI made it possible to vibe code a rough Instagram clone in a weekend. Anyway, if you want a successful new product, the path to success (obviously) isn't likely to be copying an existing behemoth, bu…

You may say that, but it seems to me that by definition vibecoding things will make them less unique because the technology is best suited to reproducing best practices even when those are cumbersome. Your best case scenario is a nontechnical person with a bright idea vibecoding something far beyond their ability to understand, and that's a recipe for implementation problems that'll harm the value of the novel thing being created.

Re: What is a product?

#46

Post by darkwater »

uxhacker wrote: post #42
JSR_FDED wrote: post #9

It’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 committ…

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…

> 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.

In that case (but IMO it applies to almost everything that's not selling a software or technical solution per se) the product IS the hotel/insurance/flights/excursions package. There is no other way. The website was never the product, it was just a channel. The difference is that especially back then the only way to use that channel was to build it by yourself. And that's something that actually happens for big enough brick&mortar stores: they do have an internal department that manages the stores, buy/rent the spaces, furnish and decorate them etc.

Re: What is a product?

#47

Post by bko »

jeremyjh wrote: post #44
bko wrote: post #41

I agree with the point generally but: > I haven't seen any real competitor of YouTube, or Figma, or Google, or Instagram created solely with AI. Is a ridiculous set of products to expect competitors for. First all but 1 rely heavily on network effects. YouTube is a low cost provider. Think about it, they provide unlimited high quality video storage for free. They process 500 hours of content every minute. Google and…

That list is a pretty high bar but you can make it as low as you like and it’s still crickets.

Read the second half of my response.

The next Google won't be a search engine with 10 blue links. Why would anyone create slightly better legacy apps.

For instance, Claude is 100% a competitor to Salesforce and there are go to market companies like Clay that manage outreach of a salesforce. Small companies can easily spin out a simple system that can source people to reach out, track follow ups, help w copy and even coordinate email.

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