why do so many products die inside services companies?
I’ve been a part of this story.
I founded Naamche, a product development agency, and we built a product called Mimir. But six months later, it died.
Here’s what we did wrong:
There's this initial rush of excitement when you start building a product. Everything feels possible. You imagine users, revenue, and a bit of changing the world. But product development isn't a sprint. It's a marathon with unavoidable valleys.
The real test comes when you hit the grind. That's when having a services business becomes dangerous.
Client emergencies create an illusion of urgency that product work can't match. The unhappy client needs attention now; the product can always wait until tomorrow.
But tomorrow never comes.
What happens instead is a slow death by neglect.
No one decides to kill the product; it just starves for attention until it's forgotten. The team stops mentioning it in meetings. The repository sits untouched. The excitement that once fueled late-night coding sessions becomes a vague memory.
There's a fundamental conflict here: services businesses operate on other people's schedules, while products require you to set and protect your own schedule.
"Inspiration is perishable. Act while the spark is fresh. Learning and building flow best when you're curious, free, and having fun." - Naval
Naval was right about inspiration being perishable.
When you feel that spark, there's a limited window to transform it into something sustainable. The tricky part is that service work brings the financial stability that should enable product development but also creates interruptions that kill it.
The only way to do it is probably to create a firewall. To build a dedicated team that's untouchable by client emergencies.
Ultimately, it's not just about allocating resources but also protecting the fragile momentum that turns ideas into products. If not, neglect will always lead to failure when building a startup.