Adding features does not automatically bring you more users.
The most common mistake that early-stage founders make (I am guilty of this mistake as well) is that they believe that adding more features will bring more people to their product. This is called scope creep.
Here is what I've learned from 15 years of starting new products: The greatest early-stage products solve one single problem, but solve that single problem very well.
Solving a single problem well
Think about Google for a minute. Google has so many products, free and paid, that I don't think any single person can list them all from memory, even the top managers at Google.
But Google did not start as a company offering 1000+ products; it started with a single product: Search engine
Google offered a single product to search the internet. It wasn't even the first one. Google did not invent the search engine, but created one that was really better than the competition.
Interestingly, the established search engines before Google tried really hard to create ”everything-dashboards” that would clutter the screen in the hope that the user would stick around longer. Meanwhile, their search mechanism was purely based on keyword frequency.
Google came along and offered an empty screen with just a search field in the middle of the screen. There were no other features, but the search (the main product) was meaningfully better as it could provide results based on semantics rather than just pure keywords.
In one famous example, someone compared Google's engine with a competitor by searching for “internet”. While the competitor showed some random web pages that had the word “internet” in them, Google actually showed web pages that described the concept of the internet. This one superior product allowed Google to gradually increase its scope and introduce more and more features and products.
The problem that many of us make is trying to simulate the multi-product Google, skipping the single-product stage of Google entirely. The lack of focus on a limited scope will lead a product to be the jack of all trades, without being able to be the best at any single one.
Your product has to be known for one thing. If I ask you to describe your product, you should be able to tell me that one thing in a single sentence.
- “My product searches the internet for you” (Google)
- “My product sells book one” (Amazon)
- “We make personal computers” (Apple)
- “My product lets you define and create your cloud infrastructure as code” (Hashicorp)
This one-feature approach is not just for raising capital, it is also necessary for bringing customers. The user or customer will be introduced to your product, regardless of the medium, as a solution to a single problem. A mature product can afford to add more features to its main one to increase user retention, but you, as an early-stage product, can't afford to do that.
Designing the scope of MVP
The first thing an early-stage startup has to do is to finalize the scope of its MVP and not change it along the way, unless really necessary.
Many founders often struggle with deciding what should be included in the MVP. They start daydreaming about the potential of their product and try to make the closest thing they can to that vision. Don't get me wrong, that daydreaming is what makes the great founders who dream of possibilities that do not exist yet, but in order to reach that vision, one has to exercise restraint.
To lock the scope of the MVP, you need to answer two questions:
- What is the absolute smallest feature set that solves your customers' problem?
- What is the absolute smallest feature set that is needed to offer the solution as a product?
The first question is about the actual solution. The core of what your startup offers. The search engine equivalent of your startup. Any feature or part of the product that is not vital to the solution should be stripped away. The goal is to solve the customers' problem well and not impress them with the ecosystem or solve all their problems.
It doesn't mean that you should forget about all the ideas you have. Your product, once it has gained the initial traction, should grow in scope. So, have a roadmap of all your ideas, but resist creating them before the initial scope has led to meaningful traction.
The second question is about all the auxiliary features that are needed to offer your core solution as a product.
For example, a SaaS would need user authentication, payment integration, a settings page allowing the user to delete their account or change their password, or email verification.
These features have no direct relation to the core solution. You are not selling user authentication or email verification. But you need these auxiliary features to turn your core solution into a product for which users would be willing to pay.
Once you have made the bare-bones MVP, you might feel like your product is not enough. You might feel that adding more features and adding just one more thing can increase the chances of getting more users. You must resist the temptation to increase the scope.
Post-MVP focus on user acquisition
Once the MVP is made, your main focus should shift away from adding more features toward two things:
1. Finding customers to use your product.
You can make the greatest product on earth, but if no one knows about it and uses it, your product would have no practical difference from the worst product on earth.
Once the MVP is done, you need to go out there and find customers. I can't tell you how you're supposed to do that, but you need to find a way.
Many builders passionately hate marketing and being loud. So, they return to their comfort zone and start building again. To create your vision, you need resources, and the only way to get the resources you need is to sell what you have already built.
2. Talk to the users you already found
For an early-stage startup, user feedback is extremely valuable. There is nothing more important than actual user feedback.
Builders have a good knowledge of the problems they solve. However, they view the problem from their own point of view, using their own experience and a lot of assumptions. User feedback corrects your assumption and tells you how well your solution works. As the user feedback starts rolling in, you should adjust your future roadmap based on the feedback.
MVP and funding
Every early-stage startup can use angel and/or VC funding. However, your ideas alone would rarely lead to funding.
In FundingBanker, we tell you if an investor considers a pre-product or pre-revenue startup. However, the number of such investors who would take such risks is small.
When you approach an investor asking for funding, there is a power dynamic between the two of you. The investor wants to find promising startups, and you need funding. You both need each other. But without concrete numbers and initial results, you don't have any leverage in the deal.
Without any results, you would be relying entirely on the investor's impression of your idea, which might be enough to get the first meeting, but is usually not enough to close the deal.
So, the safest path toward raising the first round of capital is ruthless limitation of the scope of MVP, getting the first users, and having concrete numbers.