Recently, tech products have drifted away from value realization. Every founder believes their product is valuable. The narrative in pitch decks and pitches usually revolves around a specific problem, an underserved market, or a competitive advantage. While these represent potential value, they do not equal value realization.
“It is important to know that Product-Market Fit (PMF) ≠ Value Realization (VR).”
- PMF validates that market demand exists for a solution
- VR is the moment the customer personally experiences, receives, and achieves that intended value
You might have PMF, but if that same market does not achieve VR, there is no usage and no adoption—you are stuck. No amount of marketing or distribution can replace the need for a customer to experience this moment for themselves. We must translate intended value into experienced value.
The majority of startups fail here because customers never reach the realization moment.
Why is this happening now more than ever?
- The IKEA Effect in AI building: AI allows founders to build and launch products quickly. Which, in turn, creates a sense of ownership, causing founders to overinflate their product’s actual value.
- The Loss of Healthy Friction: Historically, the friction of development forced a pause to ask, “Should we build this?” Removing that friction has bypassed our System 2 thinking—the slow, analytical reasoning required to validate deep usefulness.
Hence, customers are both overwhelmed and unimpressed by generic-looking products. At first, it created initial interest, but then no usage.
How to create value realization
Copy-and-paste frameworks will not save a product that’s generic. Founders must move away from the “sameness bubble” and invest in context-specific qualitative research.
To build a product that achieves VR, you must know:
- Why: Why did the customer fail to experience the value during onboarding?
- How: How do you rethink the product experience based on those specific insights?
- When: When does your customer need to achieve that core value impact?
The answers depend on your customer’s unique environment, mindset, limitations, and expertise.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution.
The new bar for success
AI has both lowered the barrier to building and raised the bar to entry. Speed to market is no longer a moat. Superficial, generic solutions cannot survive.
True value realization happens when customers actively pay for a product because it complements their workflows and makes them want to come back.
Do not be distracted by social media influencers claiming overnight financial success from weekend AI projects. The data tells a different story: Builders are struggling with adoption, and users are overwhelmed by sameness.
A product without active usage, regardless of how aesthetically pleasing it looks or how fast it was built, isn’t valuable. Leverage AI for execution, but lead with deep insights and deliberate System 2 thinking to build a product that provides consistent value.
The article originally appeared on Unshitty Lab.