In my last email, I explored how consistent outcomes are the foundation of any successful product. Today, I’m tackling the second crucial success factor from Chapter 15 of I Need That: Advantages.

Here’s an uncomfortable truth many product makers refuse to face: being incrementally better than the competition is pretty much never enough.

The marketplace is littered with products that were genuinely improved versions of existing solutions — 10% faster, 15% more efficient, 20% lighter — that bombed spectacularly.

Because human beings are remarkably resistant to change.

We have multiple biases that stack, bonding us to status quo solutions.

We are NOT aching for your new thing. Our real pain is to leave the trusty old one behind.

In the book, I explain that consumers overvalue what they already have by a factor of three, while innovators overvalue their improvements by the SAME factor.

This creates a 9:1 mismatch between what you think customers should value and what they actually will.

To overcome this resistance, your product needs to be not just better, but 10X better — offering advantages so compelling they overcome all the friction and costs of abandoning existing solutions.

Think about that. Switching to your product means customers have to:

• Abandon their sunk costs in current solutions
• Learn something new
• Risk disappointment or failure
• Potentially look foolish to peers if wrong

That’s a mountain of resistance. Being marginally “better” isn’t enough to scale it.

Product Payoff: Airbnb succeeded not by being marginally better than hotels, but by offering an entirely new value proposition. Rather than competing on traditional hotel metrics (cleanliness, amenities, room consistency, immediate service), they created a new category of advantage: authenticity and local immersion. This was no slight improvement — it was a fundamentally different travel experience that could NOT be directly compared to existing options. The result is a company valued at over $83 billion, that grew during a period when traditional hotel chains struggled.

Action for today: Brainstorm every advantage your product offers over alternatives. Amazing! Now, ruthlessly eliminate any that don’t represent at least a 2X improvement. What remains? These are your truly meaningful advantages — the ones with real potential to overcome customer resistance. If nothing remains on your list, you may need to reconsider your product strategy or target audience.

In my next email, I’ll explore the third critical success factor: Ease. Because even revolutionary advantages can be nullified if your product is too complicated to adopt.

Want to discuss how to identify or strengthen your product’s true competitive advantages? Tap that carefully engineered reply arrow, and let’s talk about finding your 10X factor. Or reach out to my team of product marketing specialists at Graphos Product.