Good article, but much more applicable for enterprise products vs. consumer. The problem VCs have is that most of the time they need to figure out patterns by

Good article, but much more applicable for enterprise products vs. consumer. The problem VCs have is that most of the time they need to figure out patterns by which to determine the potential of an early stage company, but most of the great companies don't fall into any pattern. Only after the fact, when looking back, can you see a pattern (other than founders, which is why they put such an emphasis on team, cause team does matter and team is more easy to recognize than product fit). By this criteria, twitter would be vitamin, facebook would be (be honest, has it been a burning desire for you to connect with long lost friends or have a social graph? not until you had it did you realize you needed it). So if your product fails these criteria, it's not the end of the world. But it is useful especially for products targeting enterprise customers.