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That seems unnecessarily cheeky. If you can make money on it, its a product, if someone builds it in to their product line, perhaps they did it better (though not always).

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You can make money off many things that aren’t products. Pedantically we might be right that anything revenue is product, but I think it’s the difference between a real product and an add on that people only buy because hey are buying something else.

The advice is useful because if I’m building a feature I will either be purchased by a product or eventually be added into a product.

I can see what you are saying. Perhaps a third option of advice is being suggested here which is diversify your feature to make it better than a built in solution or diversify your business to make it resilient to these types of loss.

I think that’s a good strategy. As long as I’ve paid attention (85+) there have been “feature” companies selling addons and stuff on top of windows, Mac, Oracle, etc.

I think the risk is thinking you are a product company when actually a feature company and then not diversifying.

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