Why Your Product May Be Struggling to Be Adopted

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Not Enough Research:

Are You Solving a Real Problem?

Just because you think something is a problem does not mean it is significant enough for others to pay to solve - subjectivity can be a real killer here. Too many founders fall in love with their ideas without validating them in the real world, or testing them with people who aren’t like them.

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Just because YOU think something is a problem that you would  pay to solve does not mean that enough other people will think the same to create a market. You have to be ruthless with yourself, and accept that, sometimes, what you want is not the same as what the market wants.

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You can of course still sell a bad or useless product—but it is not sustainable, and requires some not-insignificant marketing genius (or spend), and, sadly, that is not something we can help you with.

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This book is the bible for validating ideas. It teaches you how to ensure your research is meaningful and honest, rather than coming from an echo chamber of enthusiasm. While there are a ton of business, tech and product books out there, this is one we heartily recommend all the time.

If the person using your product isn’t the one paying for it, the problem you are solving might not align with what matters most to your buyer. Remember, if you’re making enterprise-scale accountancy software, the user (the accounting team within a business) probably is not the same person as the buyer (the CFO, the procurement team, etc).

Is your initial problem merely a mild inconvenience within a plethora of processes which, in totality, represent recurring pain points which affect a broad market segment? Sometimes it is worth “starting from first principles” to see if there’s an alternative pathway.

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Is It Worth Solving?

Sometimes, though, finding a real problem is not enough - it also needs to be a big problem, or a repeatable one, to sustain a business. There are lots of reasons why a problem might be ‘real’ but not worth solving - for example, automating every single element of a service such as accounting might theoretically solve a real problem (doing your books each year), but ultimately is not yet worth solving because, it turns out, human beings still want a human involved in doing their accounts, even if minimally (check back in on this one in a few years though).

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Alternatively, you might have a real problem with a real solution - but the numbers do not add up. In our accountancy example, if you’re offering a £2kpcm automation solution to a business, their CEO might look at the numbers and see opportunity - but then realise that the work being automated is a task that is in fact a fraction of a £18kpa employee’s work, making it a purchase not worth making. Will people pay to have this problem fixed? Will they pay enough? Will they pay regularly?

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‍Is it recurring and critical enough to command attention and budgets?

‍With a clearly defined problem that justifies repeated use.

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Who’s Selling? Who’s Buying?

No one likes selling (or at least we don’t - this is advice that we personally have learned the hard way over the years). The problem, though, is that products do not sell themselves.

Early-stage startups often overlook the critical need for a sales strategy. And while you can outsource sales eventually, doing so too early can backfire.

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Sometimes, failure boils down to not selling hard enough.

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This isn’t about being some sort of hard-nosed, will-not-take-no-for-an-answer used car salesman - instead it is about making sure that you are focusing at least some of your time and effort on the question of how you are going to deliver paying customers. However brilliant a product is, it will never sell itself.

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There is no perfect pitch—your sales approach just needs to be authentic and speak directly to the problem, the user benefit, and your solution. This sounds simple, because in many cases it is. Spending time working out the fine details of the problem you are solving, the benefit of your solution and the profile of the person or people you are selling to will prove invaluable.

Resist the temptation to lean on lead-gen tools too early. Manual effort at the start teaches you invaluable lessons about your market and customer base - and, in many cases, automated lead generation systems are unsuitable for early-stage products or businesses as they do not afford the granular, personal feedback that can be invaluable in product evolution and development in the early phases.

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Overengineered MVPs: The “Bells and Whistles” Trap

Everyone wants to build something beautifully-engineered and technically elegant. Most new software, though, does not need to be beautifully-engineered and technically-elegant right from the start. Until recently, you could launch a product with a simple landing page, manual back-end processes, and a spreadsheet - and, oftentimes, that was good enough.

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We understand that you are working towards the day when your product or solution will be the industry standard and a benchmark by which others are judged - but until you get there, it does not have to be feature-complete. Overengineering too soon is a waste of resources and can be a serious problem in product development and deployment.

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Which, if you have done your market/product fit research properly, should be simple. If your timeline for achieving milestones is two months, focus solely on what is needed for those goals.

Everyone will have an opinion on “just one more thing.” Stay disciplined.

Do not build for enterprise specs if your early customers are startups. Save the heavy lifting for later. Know what you need, when, for whom - and stick to this.

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Underengineered MVPs: The "Looks Good, does not Work" Problem

Fans of the film ‘Clueless’ might also like to call this ‘The Monet’. The opposite of overengineering is a product that looks polished but does not actually solve the problem effectively.

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This is especially damaging in the b2b and enterprise space, where complexity demands robust solutions - remember, if you’re solving a problem which affects an entire industry then there is a reasonable chance you’ll need some pretty heavy-duty engineering underpinning your solution.

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If you are post-launch and have realised this is the issue, you need a full audit and fresh perspective. You cannot fix the bicycle while riding it.

Business problems are often fractal i.e. the closer you look, the more complex/larger they become. Ensure your team understands the full complexity before building. You may notice a recurring theme throughout this document - we really believe in the importance of overthinking things at the start to avoid problems down the line.

Inexperienced developers or overly ambitious leadership often result in underengineered solutions. Balance vision with feasibility.

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Trying to Sell to Everyone, Everywhere

One of the biggest red flags in product development is when the answer to the ‘Who is your market?’ question is ‘Everyone!’. It is not possible to launch a product to an infinite audience on day 1, and it is insane to try - and yet many founders ignore their initial strategy, trying to appeal to too broad an audience too soon.

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This approach spreads resources thin and dilutes impact, and can result in a terminal loss of focus for a product or business.

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You may have ambitions to become enormous - which is great! - but you do not need to immediately develop the infrastructure to actually be enormous just yet.

Whether funding, runway, or monthly recurring revenue (MRR), set realistic, achievable goals that ladder up to long-term growth.

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Misaligned Expectations: Champagne Dreams on a Lambrini Budget

Founders often want million-dollar outcomes but balk at paying for the development needed to achieve them - which, honestly, is baffling to us. If you think your product is one day going to be worth millions, you need to invest accordingly - and you need to know that getting there takes time, and money, and without both of those things you will struggle.

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We like to make the point that the biggest software businesses in the world - think, say, Meta - have teams of very well-paid, very brilliant people who are very focused on very specific, very small problems such as ‘how big should that button be?’. Until you’re able to deploy that sort of focus and scale then you’re not going to be able to compete - and that is ok too. Realism is as valuable as ambition, in our experience.

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You cannot build a mansion with IKEA furnishings.

Market leadership does not happen overnight—it requires time, focus,
and investment.

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Final Thought:

The Struggle Is Part of the Process

Building a product is hard—and it should be. The struggle teaches you what works, what does not, and where you need to adapt. By tackling these challenges head-on, with focus and clear priorities, you’ll put yourself in the best position to succeed.

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At Daedalus, we’ve seen it all: overengineered, underengineered, over-promised, and under-delivered. If your product isn’t working as it should, we are here to help you figure out why and get it back on track. Let’s talk.

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