Product Failure

Matthew Bowe
2 min readJan 13, 2021

Does your “thing” do what it's supposed to do?

Mousetraps. Many have tried building a better one, but I’ve never seen any product as successful as the original. And so, when I have a rodent problem, I buy old fashioned, spring-loaded, wire traps.

At the core, a product, solution or service is supposed to do what it’s supposed to do. If it doesn’t do that thing successfully, you return it or never buy it again.

The other day I was taking a walk and saw a “dog decoy” in the middle of one of the sports fields in a complex. I actually thought it was a dog until I got closer. It obviously is meant to fool the geese just like it fooled me.

It seemed ingenious to me. Simple, but effective. How wrong I was.

Further into my walk, I went by another sports field and saw another decoy. But this one, wasn’t fooling the geese (see the photo below). The decoy wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do.

PRODUCT FAILURE: The decoy wasn’t very successful at being a decoy

Successful solutions deliver on a “main thing”. If they don’t deliver, they fail. When we buy things there is a promise… and we expect that promise to be met.

If your product isn’t selling, or if your customers aren’t satisfied, or if customers don’t seem interested in your follow on products, perhaps ask yourself if it is doing its “Main Thing”?

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Matthew Bowe
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I help Entrepreneurs discover, design and deliver Insanely Profitable Products… fast.