>A real product has real users, a real market and solves real problems.

This misses the mark.

A product is something which can be exchanged with others, transferred into their agency, for them to own and use according to their free will.

They don't have to use it or indeed 'be a user' - it is up to them whether or not utility is derived. The only requirement is that it is exchangeable and that agency has been transferred in such a manner that all parties involved in the exchange are satisfied with the transfer of agency.

A project is some activity which has an expectation of changing state over time.

Project management means projecting the scope and sphere of that activity into the future, in order to change its state in such a way, hopefully, that something exchangeable is produced. Product management means, making sure a satisfactory exchange occurs between the creator of a product and its new owner.

So many people get this wrong.

It is not a product if it's a project. It is only a product once it has been exchanged with another entity for their purposes.

You can have many, many projects which will never become products, because they won't be exchanged with others. You can have products which are valued by their owner in ways unintended by their creators. The value and utility is arbitrary to whether or not something is a product - the only requirement for something to become a product is that it is exchanged.

Successful product(S) are exchanged at scale. A single product can be very successful if the scale of that exchange is high. A lot of products can be very successful if the number of exchanges is great.

Until the exchange occurs, it's not a product. It's a resource. Inventory.

Side projects become products only once they are exchanged.

There really are plenty of Google analogs. There are plenty of chatbot analogs. Any one of us can recreate Instagram or X. These competitive analogs simply have not become products, because they have not been exchanged. Products which harness human collectivity have the problem of not being exchanged at scale until the collective decides to participate in the exchange, i.e. recommend their friends sign up to join them.

The problem with easily started new side projects is that they are not so easily exchanged at sufficient scale.