Too many entrepreneurs and startups get caught up trying to be everything for everyone. You can always add features or sub-products down the road, but don’t lost sight of your mission and your core competencies. Focus on one problem that your target customers have and solve it.
Get Focused
Once you start throwing in every decent idea that can be added to your product and service offering, you will find yourself with a disjointed solution that only partially solves your customers problems. As a startup, you need to determine your core competencies and stick to what’s truly essential.
Exercise: Trimming the Fat
No matter how refined you think your product or service is, cut it in half. Pare down the features until you are left with the most essential ones, and then do it again. By doing this process, you’ll avoid over-engineering, you’ll be much more efficient, you’ll spend far less on product development and employee costs and you’ll wind up with a much more narrowed target market to focus your limited sales and marketing budget on. Furthermore, you’ll end up with a product/service that truly solves your customer’s core problem.
