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Product Management7 min read

The Best AI Product I Ever Led Had Zero Customers

A retrospective on why technical excellence doesn't guarantee product-market fit.

By Richard Ewing·

The Allure of the Cutting Edge

We built a technically flawless, highly complex AI orchestration system. It utilized state-of-the-art vector embeddings, dynamic prompt routing, and rigorous execution layers. Our engineering team won awards. The architecture was pristine.

And nobody bought it.

Technical Excellence vs. Product-Market Fit

The lesson learned through millions in sunk R&D costs is that the enterprise buyer does not buy architectures; they buy operational leverage. We had fallen in love with the technology rather than the economic problem it solved.

Before you leverage the latest LLM advancement, ensure you are answering a highly acute financial pain point for the buyer. If you cannot explain the ROI to the CFO in 30 seconds, your technical excellence is irrelevant.


Read the full post-mortem on HackerNoon. Validate your enterprise hypotheses via the Enterprise Value Scenario Engine (EV-SE).

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Published Work

This article expands on ideas from my published work in CIO.com, Built In, Mind the Product, and HackerNoon. View published articles →

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Richard Ewing

The Product Economist — Quantifying engineering economics for technology leaders, PE firms, and boards.