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Are You Building a Software Product or Just More Software?
It’s the difference between users and customers
Are you building a software product? Or are you just building software?
It seems like a simple enough question. But like most simple questions, when you get under the hood, the first answer isn’t always the right answer.
I love great pieces of software, but the startup dustbin is full of great pieces of software.
Don’t think in terms of software and users
It seems obvious on its face, but when your platform is the core of your business, you’re not building software for users, you’re creating a product for customers.
That one small clarification influences everything from capturing customer information to developing the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI).
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
First, track customers earlier and longer than you would track users
A user becomes a user when they log in to your software with a username and password. But if you want to develop a product around customers, that login moment is way too late in the process to start tracking them.
