Being market-driven is easier said than done. Believe me, I learned this the hard way.

Just a couple of months ago, before the Butterfly (Morph Labs) took me under its reassuring wings, I was working as a technical writer for a much smaller technology company. Trivia: this company's corporate logo was also a flying creature — a bird ;) Working there was a great experience. The big guy was cool—he let me borrowed his DVDs— and smart, the home office was cozy and money-saving (free lunch), and the people I was working with were also all amazing, both as colleagues and as friends. At that junction, everything seemed perfect, until one day -- the big guy announced that the company is losing and is closing. Though the rhyming delivery of this news sounded poetic, and though I am a big fan of poetry, at that very moment, I lost sight of its beauty. All I could think of.....was Milk. :)

Aside from that reason given to us, i didn't know anything more about what really happened and what we did wrong as a company. That innocence lasted for a few months, and was only put to a halt a month after I started working here as part of the product management team.

Here's what we did wrong — we designed our products based on our capabilities rather than designing them according to the needs of the market. There were no more than 10 of us in that company. Obviously, our capabilities were extremely limited. There was no product management team who'll listen to what the market wants and who'll think of ways to meet those demands. No marketing team that can help put those strategies into action and promote them. There was only the development team who'll develop the capability-driven product. If you think about it, we were like a toddler who just learned how to walk wandering alone in the busy streets of Colon.

But still, basing on our very limited resources and capabilities, we thought we had an excellent product. It was trendy, easy-to-use, and it had a number of powerful and highly sought-of features. I really had high hopes from that product. Unfortunately, the market's interest took a 180-degree turn from what we hoped and worse — expected. So that's how important a market-driven mindset is, and that's how I was without a job for about a month.

In the competitive realm of technology, battles are often won in the awareness of the market's interest. The better you know what your target audience wants, the higher the chances you have of bringing home the bacon. Being market-driven is about identifying what dishes to serve based on what the patrons want to eat rather than the foodstuffs available in the kitchen. A market-driven company defines itself by the customers it wishes to serve rather than the capabilities it wishes to sell.

Everything is easier said than done, and this context is certainly not an exception. But pondering on the path and direction that Morph is taking, I can't help but smile, knowing that we are made up of well-experienced people who understands the importance of being market-driven.