I'm not sure I'm being that strange :-). At a certain point it just becomes a semantic debate, but let's try: - Product -- the thing that gets built. Let's a

I'm not sure I'm being that strange :-). At a certain point it just becomes a semantic debate, but let's try: - Product -- the thing that gets built. Let's assume there is one customer/user of it who finds it relevant to his needs. That customer/user is evaluating it on how fast it is, how reliable it is, how many features it has, how extensible it is, what platform it runs on, how easy to use it is, how polished the UI is, etc. That's that customer's view of product quality. - Market -- how many users/customers are there going to be like that? A dozen, a hundred, a thousand, a million, a billion? How hard is it going to be to get to those customers? How much will it cost to acquire them as users/customers? How long will it take them to use/buy? That's the market question. Yes, you're right, the point is that you need to make something that people want (or, more precisely, that lots of people want, if you want leverage). Yet the Valley and the industry is filled, and has been filled for 30 years, with very smart people building great products (as defined above) for very small markets. The classic example is the huge universe of ISV's for marginal platforms. Ask anyone who tried to succeed as an ISV for the NeXT box, BeOS, the Amiga, etc. what the difference is between a high-quality product and a great market, and they'll certainly be able to tell you. Hell, most (not all, but most) Mac ISV's had this exact problem over the last 20 years. I see this kind of thing all the time in this industry.