About a year ago Shay-Lee Schindler created a documentary film about the new rich people. In the film, Shay-Lee interviewed a bunch of tech entrepreneurs who made a significant exit and became very rich, exploring how the exit had impacted their lives. Her conclusion was that it’s not easy. There was a lot of criticism of the film itself, people said it was superficial and poorly made. People also said that it’s a film about first-world problems and talking about how hard it is to be a post-exit entrepreneur is simply whining. 

I personally think that regardless of the specific film, it’s an interesting topic. The point I found most interesting is that “the new rich” are people like you and me, who one day got big money that allowed them to no longer live like ordinary people. The reason they are struggling is that they don’t necessarily want to live like the rich and famous, despite the fact that they now can. It’s a matter of values, which you get conflicted with every day. One guy there bought a Porche because that was his dream which he now could afford, but he doesn’t want to be “this guy with a Porche” that everyone talks about, so the car is left in the garage covered most of the time. They can afford to have a full-time nanny or housekeeper, but do they want to be that family where the kids get everything prepared for them? 

First-world problems indeed, but IMO they are interesting ones. The fact that you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean that you want or should do it. 

That’s also the case when it comes to your products, of course. On many levels you already know that – just think about anyone coming with a feature request and trying to convince you that you should do it. You know for sure that it needs to make sense in order for you to say ‘yes’, and the fact that you can do it (technically, if not resource-wise) is not enough to justify doing that.

Today I want to highlight an area where it doesn’t seem as trivial to not do something just because you can – and that’s related to letting your technology fulfill its potential. It’s relevant for any product, but especially for deep tech products where the technology is the foundation of the product and your competitive edge.

Who Needs Your Extremely Powerful Technology?

The #1 reason that startups fail is that they make something nobody wants. Every product leader should ask themselves whose problem they are solving with their product, and make sure it’s a really painful and important one. It’s too easy and very dangerous to fall in love with the product and find all sorts of explanations regarding why it is a good product, but still be unable to explain who needs this product and why – from the customer’s point of view.

When a product starts from a very powerful technology, it’s even easier to fall in love with the technology, and let it lead the way. But as we said earlier, you shouldn’t necessarily do things just because you can.

With tech-heavy products, the tech potential is often immense. Once you had a technological breakthrough, the broke into a whole new world of opportunities opens up for you. If the company is led by tech founders (as is often the case with tech-heavy companies), they might want to explore all of these possibilities, sometimes just for the sake of it. I get it, I love technology, and I also find myself sometimes building things just because I can make them work. It’s exciting. But it’s great doing that for yourself, it’s not so great leading your entire company in that direction and betting its future on it – unless you have a really good reason to do so.

Any product leader needs to understand whose problem they are solving with the product and make sure they choose a problem worth solving (one that will allow the company to get to business success with the product). If you are in a tech-heavy startup, it’s even more important to do so, since many startups are focused on the innovation itself and not on the business success (believing that the latter would come naturally from the former, but that’s rarely the case).

The Technology Innovation Ladder

To help you ask the right questions, create a technology innovation ladder, where each level goes deeper and deeper into the technology and its full potential. For example, level 1 could be the very basic tech capability that you started with, level 2 could be doing that at scale or on multiple platforms, while level 5 is the biggest tech breakthrough that you can think of in your field.

Then, ask yourself who needs each level. Which problems it can solve, and for whom? The same problem might have multiple flavors depending on the specific segment you are serving. These flavors of the problem might also require very different levels of tech innovation.

Next, and before you decide on implementing the technology to its fullest, ask yourself if it’s a good idea. Create a mini version of a product strategy – create a pitch for the product and see if it makes sense. Note that it needs to make sense business-wise, not just tech-wise or even usage-wise. In other words, it needs to be a good business opportunity and not just a good way to solve a problem with your technology.

Here are two typical reasons why your full tech potential is not a good idea to go after. Don’t overlook them.

They Might Want to Do It Themselves

Many deep tech products aim to help other techies. It’s very tempting to go down that route as these are people who can truly appreciate your tech greatness. They will want to work really closely with you, they will ask many questions and admire your innovative thinking. They will make you happy.

But when money time comes (pun intended), they might not hurry to purchase your product. Being techies themselves, they will always have the alternative of developing it on their own. The closer you are to the core of their work, the more they are likely to want to develop it themselves. 

Think about it – their job is to solve a big, interesting problem. That’s what they come in every day for. They obviously find this problem important and interesting as they set out to work on it for so long. But should someone else come and solve it for them, they would be disappointed. In many cases, they don’t want the problem solved, they want to be the ones to solve it, and that is something you can’t help them with if you try to sell them the solution.

It’s Could Be Too Niche

Even if they do care about the problem enough to want it solved no matter who solves it, and they would really buy your super fancy extremely powerful solution, it doesn’t mean that that’s the direction your company should follow. Remember, we want business success at scale, not just a bunch of extremely happy customers.

Do these super-techy customers represent a large enough market? If you succeed with them, is that going to bring you the business results you want? I’m not talking about the results per customer, because I’m assuming that if you were able to create a product that solves a real, important problem for them and that it is indeed a hard problem to solve, you might be able to secure a nice amount of money per deal. But do these deals pile up to help you succeed at the magnitude you want to? Or are you going to serve the few companies out there that really need your full potential technology, and that’s it?

These are serious strategic questions to discuss. Maybe you do want to go for the top-tier companies because you want to get acquired by one of them sooner rather than later. They will acquire you for your technology rather than for your business in that case. If you are aiming to build a strong, scalable business, ask yourself which market segment serves you best.

Whichever you decide, as always, make an informed decision and understand the trade-offs you are making. Don’t follow the tech path into the rabbit hole just because that’s how the company started. That’s your job as the product leader – help everyone ask the right questions.