Why Most Product Launches Fail

After over 5,000 launches of products, brands, and features under our belt, but also being a spectator to many others, we've learned something surprising.

Most launches fail for one of two reasons:

1. They tell the wrong story.

2. They don't reach the right people at the right time.

That's it.

Now I'm not talking products that are just plain bad – those are going to fail anyways. I'm talking about a good product or brand being launched into the market.

Consumers buy products they understand from brands they encounter when the problem feels relevant. The challenge with this is that both of those things are incredibly difficult to get right. Teams can spend months deeply involved in the features, story, and purpose of the product and brand they're building, but then time comes to launch and it flops. They know every feature, every decision, every tradeoff, and every reason it exists. Over time, they stop seeing the product through fresh eyes and start seeing it through expert eyes.

My favorite scene from a show called Silicon Valley actually demonstrates this quite well. The protagonist Richard Hendricks is launching a beta of his compression storage application and he sends the beta to some of his friends getting amazing feedback, the one person who dislikes it is Monica. Cut to the end and it turns out the founders had only sent it to their friends – fellow engineers. Monica being the only non-engineer, found the application confusing and overly complex. It felt as she put it "engineered". To an engineer that's a compliment, to the average consumer that's not.

I see this happen often: Founders get so engrossed in why they like their product, they get in their own way. They miss the most compelling story because they have tunnel vision on another.

That doesn't mean constantly pivoting your product to 'what the consumer wants. Steve Jobs often said "People don't know what you want until you show it to them". And I largely agree. Consumer are often poor predictors of their future behavior.

I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.” - Steve Jobs

The lesson here isn't that consumers don't matter – especially after recounting my favorite scene from Silicon Valley. It's that it's your job to tell the story.

Consumers learn what a product means through the story you tell. The story shapes how they understand it, where they place it in their lives, and whether they believe it's relevant to them.

That's why choosing the right story matters. Your story can help consumers understand why they need your product, why it's different, and why it's better than the alternatives.

But even the best story can fail.

A few years ago, we worked on a product launch where the story was compelling, the product was strong, and the positioning made sense. The problem wasn't the message, it was timing. The team launched and... nothing. Interest was lukewarm and the response was nowhere near what we'd expected. Then the pandemic hit and suddenly they had trouble keeping up. The product didn't change, the story didn't change, the reality changed. Overnight, people were spending more time at home and making their home nicer was a more of a priority than before. Their priorities shifted and the story became not just relevant to those that were buying, but broadly relevant.

The challenge isn't simply finding your audience. It's finding them when the problem you solve matters enough for them to act.

Story creates relevance.

Timing amplifies relevance.

But the best stories go further than that. The best stories don't make people say "I want to buy that". They make people say "I want to be a part of that".

People don't line up for products because of features. They line up because of identity. They become advocates to be a part of the story. The most successful launches are invitations to join something – a movement, a community, an identity, some new way of seeing the world.

That's why after thousands of launches. I still believe most failures come back to the same two problems: The wrong story Or the right story reaching the right people at the wrong time.