Where I Stand
- Fadell says start with pain, not cool. What is the specific pain FeatureOS solves? "Managing product feedback" is a category, not a pain. The pain needs to be sharper.
- SupportWire: what's the press release? Have I written the 1.5-page document locking the customer, pain, differentiators, price, and channel? If not, I'm building without a script.
- Fadell's 9-14 month rule: ship or the thesis rots. How long has SupportWire been in development? If it's past 14 months, I'm in the rot zone.
- Every Fadell hit was a self-diagnosis — he carried 2,000 CDs, he hated his thermostat. Do I actually feel the pain FeatureOS solves in my own work? Or am I building for a persona I've imagined?
- Fadell says 1.0 is product, 2.0 is the fix, 3.0 is the business. FeatureOS is past 3.0 in product maturity but still at 1.0 in business maturity. The sequencing is broken.
- The MIT hackathon critique — "isn't it cool if" without asking whose life gets better — applies to features I've shipped. How many were pain-driven vs. interesting to build?
What I Need to Change
- Write the SupportWire press release this week. 1.5 pages. Customer, pain, 4-5 differentiators, price, channel. If I can't fill it in, the product isn't ready.
- Audit the last 10 features shipped in FeatureOS: which ones traced to a specific customer pain vs. "wouldn't it be cool if"?
- Set a hard ship date for SupportWire. Put it on the wall. If it's past 14 months, cut scope until it ships.
- Stop treating product craft as a substitute for the customer journey. The journey from "never heard of SupportWire" to "it's part of my life" is undesigned.
The Hard Question
Have you written the press release for SupportWire, or are you building the product equivalent of a hackathon demo — impressive tech without a customer story?