You know what makes a great product? Passion.

It is so simple and yet so often I see things that lack this simple ingredient. And when things are done without passion — it shows. Take Apple iPhones and compare them to numerous Nokia phones for example.
Just recently I talked to a friend, who had resigned from a small Toronto startup doing news aggregation.

The company had great minds working for it, there was barely anyone without a masters or a PhD degree on staff. The company spent lots of time and money working on its product, kept its development hush-hush for about a year, finally released it, went to TechCrunch50 and things seemed rosy for a while. The technology behind it was great — many hours or research, mathematical models, complex algorithms, massive data volumes processing, etc.

And then they realized that nobody really cared too much about their product.
It turned too mechanical, devoid of human touch, dispassionate.

So first the users left and then the employees started looking around for a better place.

Some might argue that there was no/poor market research done before beginning the venture. While this might be true, I stand that it was the lack of passion about what the company was doing that killed it.

Be passionate about the things you create.
Give your product your 100%, live and breathe it. Do it not just for the money. Make it bigger than yourself.
Or stop doing it and turn your energy and focus to other things you really care about.

Life is short and someday you will die, so while you still live — bring about something great.