When to Abandon a Product
summary
Presents evidence (citing MIT) that roughly 95% of new products fail, mainly due to no market demand and running out of cash, and recommends concrete product shutdown practices: validate paying users early, treat backlog items as stages from learning to revenue and cost reduction, estimate and budget shutdown/withdrawal costs before seeking funding, keep cleanup tasks small and executable, regularly delete unused features to avoid 'zombie product' debt, and draft a shutdown press release to make timing and conditions clear.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:27Product lifecycle stages
- 5:01Why products fail
- 7:30Product death cycle
- 10:25Sunk cost fallacy
- 12:58Proving market need
- 15:05Product backlog priorities
- 19:06Cleanup costs in backlog
- 21:37When to abandon a product
- 23:25Zombie products
- 25:34Preparing for product exit
- 27:47Keep product ready to die
- 30:18Q&A
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