Products Need Soul but Markets Reward Scale

Building a soulful product and building a company that wins in the public market are not the same thing. One is about making something people deeply care about. The other is about hitting numbers quarter after quarter. The market would not remember your product philosophy for a long time, but it would certainly not forget how your last quarter ended. It rewards what scales, what is predictable, and what looks good on a balance sheet. Not what was once charming.

Uber is the clearest example of a company that let go of the original story and embraced what the market wanted. It started out as a premium ride experience. Nice cars, polite drivers, smooth UX. Then it went public. Growth expectations took over. Fleet owners stepped in. Car quality dropped. The experience became inconsistent. And then came the ads. The app is now filled with offers, popups, credit cards, subscriptions, and sponsored placements — from the booking screen to the in-ride view. The soul of the product is long gone. But Uber made the tradeoff willingly. It chose financial clarity over idealism. The result is a business that is leaner, more profitable, and finally rewarded by the markets. Most riders do not care anymore as long as it is cheap and works. And Uber gave them exactly that.

Airbnb, on the other hand, is still holding on to the original vision. It continues to sell the story of living like a local, but the reality is different. Most listings are now run by commercial hosts managing dozens of nearly identical units. The charm is gone. The experience is impersonal. The fees are high. The chores are annoying. And increasingly, hotels are looking like the better option. They offer consistency, better locations, no cleaning fee surprises, and often better value. The market has shifted, but Airbnb still seems stuck between trying to be an innovative alternative and a full-blown travel platform. It has not fully adapted to what the customer now expects or what the market rewards. The story is still strong, but the product is no longer in sync with it. It remains a work in progress.

This is the tension most companies eventually face. Protecting the soul of the product often pulls in one direction. Respecting what the market rewards pulls in another. Neither path is inherently wrong, but they rarely lead to the same destination. Uber chose scale and efficiency, and it got rewarded. Airbnb is still trying to hold on to the spirit that made it special, and it is figuring out how to make that work in a world that has moved on. The outcomes are different because the tradeoffs are different.

A great product helps, but it is not enough. The market eventually reshapes the product to fit its own logic. Innovation gets things started. Scale decides how it ends. If you are building, the real challenge is knowing when to fight for the soul, and when to let go.