F**ked by Features (A Knight’s Tale)
Once upon a time… there was a group of travelers (i.e. potential customers) who for whatever reason, continuously found themselves stranded in the middle of the desert. A tech company was given the opportunity to solve their problem and capture an entirely new audience.
Like all fairy tales this one comes with valiant tech knights dressed in shiny armor, certain that their product kiss is the only one that can save these potential users from distress.
The valiant tech team was formed by a group of tech leaders, confident that with their pedigree, they will 100% come up with the BEST solution to the problem. A Visionary CEO, a Xoogler CTO & CPO, and a Product Designer joined forces and began their founders journey as all tech knights do — on a whiteboard. Together, they sketched out solutions from helicopters, to hoverboards, skateboards, to cars and they even threw in teleportation.
After much debate around the technology of teleportation and the learning curve of learning flying a helicopter, they decided a car would be the best solution for their stranded user. But what will this car look like? What will it come equipped with? What kind of features will this car come packed with? Our knights lit up at the idea of imagining a better car.
The team set off to raise an astronomical seed round telling every investor this car will come with cutting edge technology that can’t be beat! They filed patents on new proprietary technologies. They sponsored all the trendiest podcasts in tech and boasted to the world stating that they are building the ONLY car running purely on generative AI. It knows and has everything a user needs. From a snack bar that Amazon’s Alexa keeps fully stocked at all times, to a refrigerator in the dashboard, a full spa mode complete with aromatherapy and muscle relaxing massage chairs to a “boogie drive” mode that has the car swaying to the beat of the music being played via the Sonos surround sound.
And then it was time to take this baby to market…
They sent a car to one of their Beta users to which the user responds “Looks sweet! But it took me hours to figure out how to start the thing and after emailing customer service a few times, we realized it doesn’t come filled with gas.”
Ooh! GAS! Said the product team. How did we miss that one? I mean, I know how we missed that one, we were trying to cut shipping costs and since gas weighs a lot and is flammable…we left it out. What desert doesn’t have a gas station nearby!?!
So they included a filled tank of gas and a user manual and sent it to another user. The user was able to drive the car to safety and happily provided their user feedback. “The car looks cool. I was able to drive it safely home, but I’m not sure what all the additional features are for, but glad it worked!”
Success! It worked! The Founders told their investors, “we worked out the kinks from our Beta launch and are ready to really ramp things up and get paid!” We need to ramp up Customer Operations, Biz Dev & Sales STAT! We’re coming in HOT!
And that’s when Biz Dev did the math…in order for the company to be successful, they will have to sell each car at a minimum of $400,000.
“$400,000! Exclaimed the users!” “We get that it’s the coolest car on the planet, but we don’t have $400,000 to spend, and the reality is, we don’t need all the bells & whistles, we just need a simple car!”
”Simple car?!? What’s the fun in that!?!” the founders respond. If Henry Ford asked the market what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse! So they continued to push towards finding a product market fit. They pivoted and pivoted, adding and removing features with every bit of feedback given. They continued to raise their burn rate and asked investors for more capital, and continued this cycle for some time…
In the meantime, rumors of a group of users needing a reliable car with gas, AC and all-wheel-drive echoed the business world. Companies quickly entered the market with the EXACT functionality that the users needed at the right price point and at the right time. And before long, these companies to completely took ownership of this market segmentation.
As for our company of shiny knights…well, they will either end up forever raising capital and pivoting until they’ve built the right product and solution for a new market…or they will run out of capital and close their doors like the majority of startups do who are more interested in building what they think the market needs vs. building what the market needs.
TLDR: Build what the market NEEDS. Period.
You can always add extra functionality on later, but when there’s a problem to be solved — solve the F**king problem first, and then try to be the shiny feature-filled object in the room later.
