Ideally, they shouldn’t.
If you’re serious about entering a market, especially a competitive one, your first priority should be building a product that people actually want. No amount of SEO traffic will save a weak offering. If your product isn’t at least comparable to existing solutions, the traffic you generate will simply bounce.
But the opposite problem also exists.
Even a great product won’t sell if people can’t find it. That’s where SEO comes in. Search visibility helps you reach potential customers who are already looking for solutions like yours.
In reality, this isn’t an “SEO vs product” decision. You need both.
What often happens is an organisational issue. Founders juggling product development, marketing, and operations may start doing SEO themselves. When that happens, SEO can unintentionally compete for time and attention that should be spent improving the product.
The fix is usually straightforward: delegate the SEO work — either to an in-house specialist or an external team — so you can stay focused on building a product that’s actually worth discovering.