Date: 22 November, 2021

Let's begin by defining what a successful product is. Successful products solve a problem fully for users and deliver a delightful user experience. The experience is so good that a user would even happily pay for getting their problem solved.

On the other hand, a bad and successful product solves a problem but only partially or inefficiently and doesn’t deliver a delightful experience. As a user, one doesn't feel like coming back but would still need to come back since there is nothing better out there in the market to solve their problem. Or there might be some other products which are just marginally better from the existing solution and the friction to adopt them is just too high for users to switch.

Diving a bit deeper into some of the aspects of “bad and successful” products:

• “Good” or “Bad” depends on the user segment - what may be a bad product for one user may be a good product for another user.
• “Bad” but only from a specific aspect - I wouldn’t call these "bad products" as they do solve a problem fully but they are viewed as poor in a certain aspect:
  • poorly designed - Jira, Tally, Amazon
  • poorly modelled business - Blockbuster’s majority revenue came from charging late fees to customers. One can’t have a sustainable longer-term model built out of making users feel bad, hence I would term this as a poor business model

How do bad products become successful?

When a problem is solved partially by a product but users still continue using it because of the lack of any other alternative way to solve their problem fully, these products start becoming successful. I'll call these successful "businesses" rather (most cases earning revenue and profit) but not successful products as the vast majority of users feel little value and still hesitatingly continue to pay for this value. Example: subscription based dating apps where you'd pay if you still haven't derived the value from the product i.e you are still paying because you still haven't been able to go on a good date. You'd stop paying if you were no longer single and dating someone.

How do good products turning bad (intentionally or unintentionally) for a particular segment?

It might be the case that a product is no longer a great experience for some part of the user segment i.e product market fit (PMF) has degraded for this segment but the product still delivers value to another user segment. These are still successful products since they deliver value to a decently sized segment if not the majority of the TAM. PMF degrades over time for a certain user segment because of 2 reasons -

1. The product evolved in a way that focussed on one specific segment. Example: Adobe photoshop over-optimized for power users and is now a professional segment targeted product which meant PMF was lost for the amateur segment. So, it’s a poor product for the amateur segment where now Figma and Canva play.
2. The user segment has evolved and has different needs now which can't be met with the existing product Example: for Facebook, users who join in their 20s might want to connect with >100s of friends but as users grow older, they might prefer a close network of ~20 friends. Also, lots of features that address very specific needs of a niche user segment have gotten added to FB over time which may make the app feel clunky to the remaining population (FB fundraisers, FB blood donation, FB jobs are features which are not so mainstream). Hence, it might be seen as a relatively poorer product for users who were used to the neat and light experience, however it still continues to run strongly for newer users. This would also reflect in their retention cohorts.