There is a stage in every founder’s journey when the product starts feeling less like a product and more like a baby.
Your product is not your business. It is one part of a larger system of customers, economics, positioning and decisions.
You created it. You thought about it. You argued about it. You spent money on it. You probably lost sleep over it.
And because you have put so much of yourself into it, criticism of the product can start feeling like criticism of you.
I know this because I’ve done exactly that.
The bottle that looked like cheap liquor
Between 2017 and 2022, we were in the business of manufacturing and selling apple cider vinegar. So if you were an early adopter of healthy beverages, you must’ve heard about BuenaVeda Apple Cider Vinegar. It was not the most sought-after, but we did have a good number that made us happy.
Our first product was a regular, organically produced apple cider vinegar with the mother. We made our first batch, put it into plastic bottles and designed the label ourselves.
We were quite proud of it.
Then the product went onto shelves and the feedback started coming in.
It looked like a cheap bottle of liquor.
That wasn’t particularly pleasant to hear when you had poured so much into creating it. So we did what founders sometimes do when they are too close to their product.
We defended it.
The feedback didn’t disappear. Neither did the problem.
Over the following year, the numbers told us something we were reluctant to accept: the product simply wasn’t moving the way it should.
Eventually, we stopped defending the product and started looking at the business.
We spoke to people who had experience in similar businesses. We listened to the feedback we had received earlier. We changed the packaging, hired a better designer and moved from plastic to glass bottles.
The results were striking.
We went from selling a 500 ml bottle at ₹300 to selling a 250 ml bottle at ₹200. The price per ml went up considerably, and so did the number of bottles we were selling.
The lesson wasn’t really about glass bottles.
It was about letting go.
Loving the product and building the business are different things
Let the business make the decision
You can absolutely love your product.
You can be proud of it. You can believe in it. You can spend years making it better.
But building a business is a different exercise.
A business has to make money.
That doesn’t mean money is the only thing that matters in life. It means that if you have decided to call something a business, its ability to generate money cannot become an uncomfortable subject that you keep avoiding.
If you want to preserve something exactly as you created it because you love it, that’s perfectly fine.
Make it a hobby. Make it a creative project. Enjoy it.
But if you’re building a business around it, the business has to be allowed to win.
The easiest way to spot the problem
I’ve seen this with founders I’ve worked with.
Ask for evidence, not reassurance
The conversation starts with the product, and somewhere along the way you ask an uncomfortable question:
“How much money is this particular product actually making for you?”
And suddenly, the answer changes.
“We’re building the brand.”
“We believe in the product.”
“We’ve promised ourselves we’re going to make this work.”
Maybe.
But none of those answers the question.
The tell is often defensiveness. When money moves down the priority list and protecting the product becomes more important, you may have stopped building the business and started protecting the product.
Talk to people who have nothing to gain from making you happy
If you think you might be doing this, don’t immediately ask your friends or family what they think.
They love you.
That’s precisely the problem.
Go to the people who actually use your product. Talk to potential customers. Talk to people who have no reason to make you feel good about your creation.
Ask them what they think.
And then, most importantly, listen without defending yourself.
Sometimes the hardest business decision isn’t creating something new.
It’s accepting that something you created needs to change.