The Three Pillars of Product Success: Why Good Ideas Still Fail

I’ve watched a lot of smart people build things that nobody wanted. I’ve also watched people want things that couldn’t be built, and people get excited about things that turned out to be completely useless once they actually had them.

After seeing this pattern repeat itself across everything from AI startups to kitchen gadgets, I’ve started thinking about product success as requiring three distinct pillars. Miss any one of them, and you’re probably going to have a bad time.

The Three Pillars

Every successful product or technology needs all three of these:

1. Technical Feasibility - It can actually be built with current technology and resources
2. Perceived Value - Customers believe it will solve a problem they care about
3. Actual Value - They are correct, it does in fact solve a problem that does actually matter

Sounds obvious. But here’s the thing: most failed products nail two out of three. The real challenge is getting all three aligned, and the failure modes for each missing pillar are surprisingly different.

When Technical Feasibility Is Missing

This is the “flying car” problem. Everyone wants one, it would genuinely be useful for avoiding traffic, but the physics, infrastructure, and regulatory challenges make it practically impossible with current technology.

What it looks like: Lots of excitement, impressive demos, but the product never quite works reliably in real-world conditions. The startup keeps raising money for “just one more breakthrough” that never comes.

Classic example: Remember Theranos? People desperately wanted better blood testing (perceived value), and getting comprehensive health data from a drop of blood would have been genuinely revolutionary (actual value). But the technology to do what they claimed simply didn’t exist.

Early test: Build the absolute simplest version of your core technology. If you can’t get the basic mechanism working reliably, everything else is just wishful thinking. There are good and useful frameworks for measuring this kind of technical readiness (see our series on NASA’s Technology Readiness Levels: The Basics, Early Stages, Validation, Deployment, Software Development, and Comparison with Other Models)

When Perceived Value Is Missing

This is the “better mousetrap” fallacy. You build something technically impressive that genuinely solves a problem, but nobody realizes they have that problem or cares enough to change their behavior.

What it looks like: The product works great, early adopters love it, but it never breaks out of niche markets. You spend all your time explaining why people should want it instead of people asking how to get it.

Classic example: Google Glass was technically feasible (they shipped it) and would have been genuinely useful for hands-free information access. But regular people saw it as creepy and unnecessary. The perceived value just wasn’t there for mainstream adoption.

Early test: Before building anything, spend time with potential customers understanding their current workflow. Don’t ask if they’d want your solution, ask them to walk you through how they currently handle the problem. If they don’t mention the problem or seem frustrated by their current approach, you might have a perceived value issue.

When Actual Value Is Missing

This is the “shiny object” trap. The technology works, people get excited about it, but once they actually use it regularly, it doesn’t meaningfully improve their lives.

What it looks like: Strong initial adoption followed by rapid churn. People try it, maybe even pay for it, but don’t stick around. Usage metrics look good at first, then plateau or decline.

Classic example: Most social media scheduling tools fall into this category. They’re technically solid, people think they want to schedule posts in advance, but many users discover that scheduled content feels inauthentic and they prefer posting in the moment.

Early test: Get people using your product for their actual work, not just demos. Track what they do after the initial excitement wears off. Are they still using it after two weeks? Are they recommending it to colleagues? If engagement drops off quickly, you might have an actual value problem.

The Intersection Problems

The really tricky failures happen at the intersections:

Feasible + Perceived Value - Actual Value: This is the “overpromise, underdeliver” zone. Think of all the productivity apps that technically work and sound like they’ll revolutionize your workflow, but end up being more complicated than your old system.

Feasible + Actual Value - Perceived Value: This is where most genuinely useful B2B tools live before they figure out their marketing. The product works great and helps people, but explaining why is hard.

Perceived + Actual Value - Feasible: This is where you get vaporware and endless delays. Everyone wants it, it would be genuinely helpful, but the technical challenges are harder than expected.

Testing Your Idea

Here’s a simple framework for stress-testing whether you have all three pillars:

For Technical Feasibility: Build the core mechanism with the simplest possible interface. Don’t worry about user experience - just prove the fundamental technology works reliably. If you can’t get this working quickly, everything else is premature.

For Perceived Value:

Spend a day shadowing someone who has the problem you’re solving. Watch their current process without mentioning your solution. If they don’t complain about their current approach or seem frustrated by it, dig deeper into whether this is actually a problem worth solving.

Ask them if XYZ would be valuable? Dig into their response, how valuable? Why haven’t they fixed it already? If it’s really valuable they will be excited to talk about this and get their problem solved.

For Actual Value:

Don’t just take what the customer says at face value. They say they would like a feature? That’s amazing, but why? What will they do with it? What is the actual reason that it is useful and valuable? Understand that deeply and measure or test your ability to realize it. If they are saying they would love feature X because it would save them 2 hours a week, then make sure in your alpha you are measuring time saved per week: it better be 2 hours.

The Reality Check

This framework won’t guarantee success, but it will help you fail faster on ideas that aren’t going to work. And failing faster means you can iterate to something that might actually work before you run out of time and money.

The best products make all three pillars look effortless. But that’s usually because someone did the hard work of validating each pillar separately before putting them together. The magic isn’t in the final product, it’s in the unglamorous testing that happened long before anyone saw the polished version.