I’ve seen countless product teams fall into the “feature factory” trap – building more, faster, louder. But here’s what I’ve learned in my research and experience in product strategy: The most successful products do fewer things exceptionally well.
Why feature blot kills products?
• Confuses users with too many choices • Dilutes your core value proposition
• Increases technical debt and maintenance costs • Makes it harder to measure what actually drives growth
The power of saying no: When #Slack launched, they could have built file sharing, video calls, and project management from day one. Instead, they laser-focused on making team messaging effortless. That focus made them indispensable.
Three questions I ask every product team:
- What’s the ONE thing users can’t live without?
- Which features actually drive retention vs. just usage?
- What would happen if we removed our least-used 50% of features?
The hardest part isn’t building features – It’s having a discipline to cut them.
Your users don’t want 100 mediocre features. They want 5 features that solve their problems so well, they can’t imagine using anything else.
Focus isn’t about doing less. It’s about doing what matters most, exceptionally well.
What’s one feature you wish your favorite product would remove? ?