Most people judge digital products by what’s easy to see:

The design. The features. How smooth it feels.

That makes sense it’s visible, it’s immediate. But it rarely tells you whether a product will survive.

When I look at a product especially a new tech product I don’t start with features. I start with a few quieter questions. The kind of things you won’t see on landing pages, demos, or hype threads.

Who paid for this to exist?

Every product has a source of money. Venture capital, bootstrapped cash, grants, tokens, or user revenue it’s always somewhere.

Money comes with expectations: growth, users, influence, revenue. Understanding where the money comes from tells you a lot about the pressures on a product and the choices its team will make.

Where could this realistically go wrong?

Products don’t fail because someone wanted them to fail. They fail because of structure.

Maybe the team tried to scale too early, built for the wrong audience, or made something that looked good on paper but didn’t fit real behavior.

Risk isn’t flashy it’s quiet. Slow. Hidden in the foundation.

Why would someone keep using this after the first week?

Attention is cheap. Retention isn’t.

If a product doesn’t give people a reason to come back something genuinely useful, meaningful, or habit-forming rewards and incentives won’t help.

How often people return is often the clearest signal of whether a product actually works.

Most online conversations focus on hype or surface-level reviews. I’m more interested in what sits underneath: the invisible structure that determines whether a product grows, stalls, or quietly disappears.

These are the questions I carry with me now as I study products. They don’t make for flashy headlines, but they show me what really matters.

Most people judge digital products by what’s easy to see:

The design. The features. How smooth it feels.

That makes sense it’s visible, it’s immediate. But it rarely tells you whether a product will survive.

When I look at a product especially a new tech product I don’t start with features. I start with a few quieter questions. The kind of things you won’t see on landing pages, demos, or hype threads.

Who paid for this to exist?

Every product has a source of money. Venture capital, bootstrapped cash, grants, tokens, or user revenue it’s always somewhere.

Money comes with expectations: growth, users, influence, revenue. Understanding where the money comes from tells you a lot about the pressures on a product and the choices its team will make.

Where could this realistically go wrong?

Products don’t fail because someone wanted them to fail. They fail because of structure.

Maybe the team tried to scale too early, built for the wrong audience, or made something that looked good on paper but didn’t fit real behavior.

Risk isn’t flashy it’s quiet. Slow. Hidden in the foundation.

Why would someone keep using this after the first week?

Attention is cheap. Retention isn’t.

If a product doesn’t give people a reason to come back something genuinely useful, meaningful, or habit-forming rewards and incentives won’t help.

How often people return is often the clearest signal of whether a product actually works.

Most online conversations focus on hype or surface-level reviews. I’m more interested in what sits underneath: the invisible structure that determines whether a product grows, stalls, or quietly disappears.

These are the questions I carry with me now as I study products. They don’t make for flashy headlines, but they show me what really matters.