Does your startup need more features?

Does your startup need more features?

What’s more important: adding features or staying flexible enough to adapt?

It’s clear that adaptability wins. New features won’t always enhance your product. In fact, they can slow you down. Every extra feature adds complexity, making it harder to adjust and improve quickly.

This might be fine if you’ve already found product-market fit, but if you’re still searching, it’s dangerous. Imagine having the perfect solution for your users but taking months to roll it out because your product is too weighed down.

Your core offering should provide real value — piling on features won’t fix that. Keep your product nimble for as long as you can. Building a product is like running a marathon with a backpack. Adding features adds weight to your backpack.

Some product features will add a lot of weight to your backpack. They make you go slower by a small percentage for the rest of your run. They make it harder to change your product.

Other features don't add much weight at all. The weight of a feature doesn't necessarily correlate to their value to the customer. Some features are REALLY valuable, but don't complicate your code much.

Other features might only be useful to a handful of customers, but significantly complicate the codebase going further. Slowing you down a little bit, forever.

Example 1: I delayed adding "private profiles" to WIP as long as possible, because adding privacy features impacts ALL THE CODE that deals with showing todos throughout the site. I've added it now, but it's one extra thing to think about, ALL THE TIME.

Example 2: Dark mode is great. I love it. But adding it to your product means ALL FUTURE DESIGN CHANGES require you to add a darkmode variant. Even if it's quick to add now, it will slow you down by a small percentage, FOREVER.

So the next time you decide on adding a new feature or making a change, ask yourself this: how much weight will this add to my backpack?

Credit: Marc Köhlbrugge

Richard Branson’s delegation process

The art of delegation has its roots in accepting perfect isn’t always possible.

- Richard Branson

Entrepreneurs often face an endless list of tasks, which is why Richard Branson believes that delegation is crucial.

You can’t bring new ideas to market through sheer force of personality, you need to delegate so you can focus on the big picture.

- Richard Branson

The idea that you can do everything yourself is a fairy tale, he says. It’s essential to hand off tasks that aren't your strength. Branson encourages curiosity, but if you aren’t good at something, let someone else take the reins.

This philosophy has been key to Virgin’s success. Branson highlights how they rely not only on internal teams but also on external contractors, freelancers, and agencies.

These partnerships, with experts in fields like web development and service supply, have fueled Virgin’s growth for over 40 years. Delegating can feel intimidating at first. But that’s okay. It’s the first step that starts all the progress that follows right after.

The VC tide has gone out

The era of easy money is over. Zero-interest rates and massive liquidity created a perfect storm for startups. Founders went from scraping by to raising millions.

But when money is essentially free, risk gets distorted. Venture capitalists over-allocated, pushing up valuations and lowering the quality bar.

The result? A lot of hype and little substance. Instead of driving true innovation, the past decade gave us buzzwords like crypto, fintech, and the Metaverse.

Real industrial advances? Not so much. GenAI Companies like came on top. OpenAI just raised the biggest venture round in history ($6.5B at $150B post), with Anthropic a relative bargain at just $40B.

If your company has a strong impact, you have nothing to fear. If it doesn't, you might be in trouble.

This article was originally published here.