We Can't Feature Our Way To Product Success
Read on my website / Read time: 5 minutes
You can't feature your way to market fit.
What do I mean by "market fit"?
It means your product or feature solves a critical need for a specific group of customers, and needs to do this so well that they adopt it, stick with it, and - ideally - advocate for it.
It's that feeling of a strong "pull" from the market.
When this happens, the sales process becomes less about justifying the product to customers, and more about overcoming purchasing obstacles - affordability, ease, onboarding, support, that sort of stuff.
BTW, sales people much prefer this. Overcoming purchasing obstacles is what they get paid to do.
They HATE it when they feel forced to "push" the product into the market.
The need for market fit applies to the product as a whole and to individual features.
There should be a "pull" for features just as there is a "pull" for the product as a whole.
It's not about bells and whistles. It's about delivering undeniable value.
"Let's Just Build More" Doesn't Work
Every product goes through a lifecycle. In the early days of a new product, there's just one job: Get people to want what we've built. That's it. Everything else is a distraction.
It's not about convincing folks to buy your product. It's finding that pull from those early adopters.
As the product gains some traction, the goal becomes growth. This is mostly sales and marketing. New features should fuel growth. All others are nice-to-have's.
This is still about finding pull - the pull to be able to acquire new customers beyond early adopters and expand existing customer relationships.
As the product matures, the goal becomes about running the business model for market entrenchment and expansion. New features are mainly about retaining (and expanding) existing customers and keeping new entrants out.
Now, if growth slows, usage stalls, or things feel stagnant, it's tempting to think that the answer lies in simply building more features.
The knee-jerk reaction is often:
- “Let’s add features.”
- “Let’s ship something new.”
- “Maybe this will fix it.”
Understandable. Building feels productive. It feels like progress.
But here's the catch:
- Adding features doesn’t fix unclear value.
- More stuff doesn’t make customers stick around.
- We can’t patch over weak fit with shiny tools.
If our product or feature isn't hitting the mark, adding more to it won't magically change that.
The Killer Feature Fallacy
The trap is thinking more features = better odds. The bigger trap is thinking one killer feature or requirement can unlock market fit.
It's a trap because it feels easier and more comfortable than what we really need to do: asking tough questions.
Products don't fail because they're one feature short of glory. A feature doesn't fail because it's one requirement short of greatness.
They fail because its custodians didn't listen to the market.
A truly valuable feature is born from a deep understanding of user pain. If the demand isn't there, all we're doing is spending more to force what isn't working. Pushing harder on a door handle marked pull.
Paradox?
"But how do I know if the feature or product is going to be successful unless we build it?"
It's true: we don't know if a product or feature is actually going to work until we put it out to market. Until users get their hands on it.
This isn't about never building features.
Competitive markets require parity to play. Enterprise customers need configurations and integrations. Scale needs investment. Engagement requires onboarding.
But these are to break through barriers to entry or to accelerate an already working machine. They rarely fix a broken one.
For a telehealth platform, integration with an electronic health record won't matter if a video call can't be done successfully.
A project management software enabling a holistic view across multiple teams won't matter for a small business.
A messaging app that supports video calling, doc sharing, and 3rd party integrations, etc., may not matter in the consumer space as it does in the productivity space.
This is about never building features for features sake.
Feature Build = Spending Money
I worked at a startup where the founder kept throwing new feature and product ideas at the team every month. Sometimes every week. It was a desperate attempt to win new customers with shiny new toys.
He put enormous pressure on the PM and Engineering teams to satisfy his demands.
At the end of the year, we had all these features (mainly pushed by him) but results were way below expectation.
And, he was forced to ask his investors for more money.
Many founders find out too late they wasted money chasing fit - when they either run out of money or realize they've created a graveyard of features no one uses.
The same for product leaders and executives trying to chase product success - they realize their failure when they either run out of budget or grasp they've created a graveyard of features no one cares about.
As an individual contributor product manager, it's easy to live in ignorance of budget implications. Unless we're taught this, we don't intuitively connect the dots between the investment being made in our products (i.e., our salary, our engineering team's salary, overhead, platform costs, etc.) and outcomes. It's easy to just keep adding more and more features in the hopes of user satisfaction (and our boss's approval).
Here's the thing so many product managers, product leaders, and founders miss:
Building features means spending money.
And we can't spend our way to market fit.
In other words -
We can't feature our way to product success.
Building features sure feels productive. Asking for more budget feels like we're improving the odds. Spending money feels like we're doing something. Shipping feels like progress.
But that doesn't always move the needle.
It's easier to throw money at the problem than face the reality that we did a poor job of understanding the market.
It's so much easier than asking the hard questions. It's easier than admitting our market isn't pulling us forward, or... that we may have built something no one really needs.
So we spend.
We spend on requirements.
We spend on development.
We spend on features.
Hoping volume hides our shortcoming is gaslighting ourselves that if we just had more, did more, built more, delivered more... then everything would click.
Only to find that we got nothing from that spend.
That's when the CFO starts asking very uncomfortable questions.
Nervous Founders / Execs
We've all seen it:
Sales are anemic. Retention isn't great. Customers aren't engaged. The team's anxious.
And then the founder / exec panic sets in.
You start hearing things like:
- "We need a dashboard."
- "Let’s build that feature our competitor has."
- "Customers might want this, let's add it."
(If you're an exec reading this, c'mon, admit it - you've been guilty of this. I know I have.)
It's all coming from a good place - but it's the wrong move. Panic leads to building. And building without direction just leads to clutter.
Market fit isn't a feature problem.
Market fit isn't a cash problem.
Market fit is a pull problem.
If there's no demand for the feature or the product, no amount of money is going to solve for that.
Every product, every feature, needs to have a pull from the market.
Building For Necessity
We've all heard this: build outcomes, not features. I talk about it all the time. LinkedIn is littered with admonishing posts about not being a "feature factory".
But what does it actually mean to build for outcomes?
It starts with mindset. It's the difference between:
- "Let's build a dashboard" (feature-thinking)
versus
- "Let's help our users understand their progress" (outcome-thinking)
Then we can define a way to measure that outcome - "How will we know users are successfully able to understand their progress?"
Our job is then to figure out a way to satisfy that outcome with the fewest features - with only the most necessary requirements. To find the simplest possible path to create the most value.
So, build for necessity. Not for volume.
What We Can Do
As product folks, this is our moment to step up. Here's how we can redirect feature frenzy into something that actually moves us toward fit:
1. Shift from features to outcomes.
Instead of "What should we build?", ask:
- "What problem are we trying to solve?"
- "How will this make our customers more successful?"
- "How will this enable us to meet our business goals?"
It's not about what we can add. It's about what they truly need that will make them successful, resulting in making our business successful too.
2. Ask the hard (but necessary) questions.
Not to be annoying - just honest. Like:
- "What's the core problem here?"
- "Who are we really building this for?"
- "Why is this important to solve?"
- "Are we solving a need, or just filling space?"
- "If we didn’t build this, would anyone notice?"
- "If we did build this, what will it take, what do we get for it, and how soon will we get it?"
Asking these questions doesn't make us difficult - we're being responsible.
3. Go deep and wide.
Instead of spraying the market with features, praying to see what sticks, figure out how your customers' world works.
- Map their workflow - What steps do they take? Who else do they interact with?
- Map their ecosystem - What tools do they rely on or integrate with?
- Map their behavior - What do they actually do to get their job done? Why do they do it that way?
- Map their challenges - What obstacles do they have to overcome to get their job done? Where is the pain the most acute?
4. Let the data talk.
Bring in the real signals. Things like:
- Where are people getting stuck?
- What are people actually using?
- Where do they drop off?
- What's driving activation / usage / engagement / retention?
When we show what's really happening, it's easier to move away from guesses.
Real usage tells the truth. Bring it into the room.
If people aren't using what’s already there, adding more won’t help. It will just hide the problem.
5. Think smaller and smarter.
Not every idea needs to be a full-blown feature.
We're not trying to win with volume - we're trying to learn faster.
We don't need to launch a huge feature to learn something valuable.
Can we test the concept in a week? Can we prototype it in a day? (A lot easier now with AI tools.) Test it with a few users first?
This isn't about saying "no" to building. It's about building smarter and faster - by learning before we invest big.
6. Watch for pull, not push.
If we're pushing all the momentum, we haven't found fit yet. Pushing more features and adding more requirements won't fix that.
Market fit looks like:
- Users coming back on their own
- People telling their team/friends
- Customers hacking together workarounds
- Inbound requests, not outbound pressure
That's pull. That's the signal we're on to something.
Final Thoughts
The best products don't have the most features. They have the clearest value.
They solve a real, painful problem. And they do it with just enough to matter.
The best product teams aren't the ones that ship the most. They're the ones who learn the fastest. Who listen hardest. Who stay focused on what actually moves the needle.
Fit is an outcome the market gives you. We can't buy our way into it. We can only discover it, earn it, and prove it.
So before you add another card to the roadmap, ask:
"Is this feature solving a real customer need, or just helping us feel busy?"
Because busy isn’t the goal. Fit is.
So don’t fall into the trap of doing more to feel better.
Do less, but make it count.
Ask yourself:
If we stopped building tomorrow, what would our users actually miss?
That answer will tell you more about your product than your roadmap ever will.
