Dealmakers vs Dealbreakers vs Nice to haves: Not everything matters equally.

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By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 5 mins


Summary: A rule of thumb I have for products to hopefully be successful - 2+ Dealmakers and no Dealbreakers. 


Details of Dealmakers

  • L2: Dealmaker

  • L1: Nice to have

  • L0: Indifference

  • -L1: Dislike

  • -L2: Dealbreaker


Utilitarianism vs Deontology 

  • IMO not everything can be netted off (utilitarianism). EG it doesn’t matter how many dealmakers a product has, if it has one dealbreaker people will not use it (deontology). 

  • Also, normally having 10x ‘L1: Nice to haves’ isn’t as important as having 1x ‘L2: Dealmaker’. 

  • Utilitarianism

    • 2x ‘L1: Nice to haves’ will offset 2x ‘-L1: Dislike’

    • A product with 2x ‘L2: Dealmakers’ and 1x ‘-L2: Dealbreaker’ still has net 1x ‘L2: Dealmaker’ and is good to go. 

    • Comment:

      • I think you can net off ‘L1: Nice to haves’ and ‘-L1: Dislikes’. 

      • But normally 1+ ‘-L2: Dealbreaker’ and a product is dead. 

      • *Aside: often enough, a net of 5x+ similar ‘-L1: Dislikes’ can turn into a ‘-L2: Dealbreaker’. For example 5x small UX issues can lead someone to overall find a product too hard to use and UX is a ‘-L2: Dealbreaker’. 

  • Deontology

    • 1x ‘L2: Dealmaker’ will not offset 1x ‘-L2: Dealbreaker’. 

    • In fact 10x ‘L2: Dealmakers’ will not offset 1x ‘-L2: Dealbreaker’. All it takes is 1x ‘-L2: Dealbreaker’ and it’s game over for your product. 

    • But 2x ‘L2: Dealmakers’ normally mean people ignore some things they ‘-L1: Dislike’. 

    • I’ve found that people see and talk about the ‘-L2: Dealbreakers’ the most and first. Then if there are no ‘-L2: Dealbreakers’ people talk about ‘L2: Dealmakers’. Only after this do people normally talk about things they like / dislike. 

  • Put in lean methodology: Minimum Viable Product (MVP) = 1. No Dealbreakers + 2. 2x+ Dealmakers + 3. Likely lots of areas of ‘-L1: Dislike’, ‘L0: Indifference’ & ‘L1: Nice to haves’

    • Over time you want to get rid of as many areas of ‘-L1: Dislike’ and level up areas of ‘L1: Nice to have’ into ‘L2: Dealmakers’, but to me it’s unlikely and even counterproductive to try have all areas of the product be ‘L2: Dealmakers’ at launch. 

    • Some relevant blogs: 

    • The Minimum Viable Product needs to be able to succeed. I don’t think there is any point launching a product where you cannot see solid traction for a segment of the market. 


There is always a most important thing, and if you don’t know what the important thing is you won’t be important for very long! 

  • I normally try to figure out what the most important thing is and then make it a dealmaker. I’m not trying to find dealmakers, I’m finding Jobs To Be Done and then trying to build a dealmaker solution for the Job To Be Done. 

  • Places to look up build dealmakers

  • Normally I look for where the most time is spent on a problem

  • Or where people care the most. 

  • Then do the work to earn secrets.

  • One MECE for possible dealmaker areas

    • New feature / functionality. 

    • Big increase in the quality of an existing feature. 

    • Ease of user experience. 

    • Time savings. Something that is higher quality but takes longer to do often does not get done!


Ceilingless vs Having a ceiling

  • Some places have a ceiling where you can’t improve something anymore. Most places do not, eg how good a maths textbook can be. 

  • Dealmaker doesn’t mean something can’t be improved further, it just means the step change is enough over the existing outcome to ‘change the game’. IMO the first iPhone was a game changer. IMO the iPhone 14 isn't a game changer over the iPhone 13. 


Feature vs UX

  • UX = User experience 

  • I think it’s possible for both a feature and the UX of a feature to be dealmaker and / or dealbreaker. 

  • But sometimes if a feature is good enough (eg a L2: Dealmaker) people will overcome average (L0: Indifference) UX to get to the feature. 

    • Please note I'm not saying you don't want great UX. 

  • In other words ‘L2: Dealmakers’ can solve average UX. You can go from struggling to activate people to having strong retention. 

  • Conversely, often people don’t do what is best for them, but whatever is the path of least resistance. Let's say a task takes 2 hours to do. If you can get the same task done in 1.5 hours at a similar quality then people will likely do it. A dealmaker can be time saving!

  • Man struggles uphill, water flows downhill. IMO saving times is a product where ‘water (man) is flowing downhill’. 


Deal or No Deal: Rejection vs Minimal traction vs Strong traction (Product Market Fit)

When calibrating which product changes to do, look at the changes through Dealmaker ⇔ Dealbreaker taxonomy

  • When building a product I’m usually trying to optimise for validated units of learning. This often means that a product has been used by customers and you have observed the customers using the product. 

  • Each time you observe you normally get multiple ideas of what to do. Which ones do you prioritise? This is normally how I approach things:

    • #1 is removing dealbreakers

    • #2 is adding dealmakers

    • I normally leave everything else (eg adding a ‘nice to have’ or ‘removing a dislike’) and then build the next version of the product taking into account “#1 is removing dealbreakers” & “#2 is adding dealmakers” and then go and do another round of user testing. 

  • Don’t do no brainers, remove deal breakers or add dealmakers. 


If you only take away one thing

  • I think the concept of dealmakers and dealbreakers can be a dealmaker! 

  • Or… dealbreaker = dealmaker ;)