

The one slide your startup should never have in its deck. - petervandijck
http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2011/06/12/4875/more-features-competitive-advantage-for-a-startup

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pg
I disagree. This type of slide can be useful for explaining where the startup
fits.

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Swannie
Especially for the people in the audience asking themselves "is this like X,
but with i and j?" ... "Ahhh, it IS like X with i, j AND k. Now I get it."

Which you hope to lead on to "Now why can't X just add these features? What
makes /this/ company better than X?"

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albedoa
Or, "Now why do I need i, j, and k?," which is sort of where you were going
there ;)

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ctide
Considering that slide could be used verbatim in a Turntable.fm deck (which,
btw, is an absolutely amazing product) I'd argue that this is post is doing it
wrong.

EDIT: After looking at the actual presentation,
[http://www.slideshare.net/vgvikas/musicwalla-business-
pitch-...](http://www.slideshare.net/vgvikas/musicwalla-business-
pitch-7864740), this literally mirrors the idea behind Turntable.fm. It
provides all those features (plus others not included in the slide) and is
both awesome and innovative. I get the general gist of the advice being given,
but the example is horrendous.

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DevX101
Unless you're selling to enterprise or the government.

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hvs
Most enterprises and governments don't work with startups.

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bane
unless you're a startup that sells to the government (e.g. Palantir)

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amalcon
The problem here is not that they have "more features". The problem is that
this _slide_ is focused on features. Users do not care about features.

Users care about what those features allow them to _do_. Use-cases. Frame it
as as "You can do this thing (that you actually want to do) with us, and not
with our competitors". That's a completely different beast than "We have X, Y,
Z capabilities."

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kenjackson
I disagree. First, it's one slide.

Second. Users do care about features. Apple routinely, as in virtually every
Jobs keynote, lists off features. They then demo them, but the slides list off
actual capabilities.

Now you may say that Apple isn't a startup so they don't have to present
things this way. Possibly, but well done features are still often the key
differentiating factor between products.

I almost bought a new Nook -- know why I didn't? It lacked a key feature. The
reason I don't use Pandora, but do use Grooveshark -- a key feature is missing
in Pandora.

I know ppl love these grandiose -- "Everything you know is wrong" posts, but
usually they spew poor advice.

With that said, the problem with these sorts of slides is more basic. They
generally don't list the check boxes for all the features the competition has
that you don't. I find these more useful when presented by a 3rd party. The
nice thing about features is that a 3rd party can typically do a decent job of
putting a list together, w/o input from any of the parties.

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asanwal
It'd be nice if startup advice wasn't so absolute and instead presented
"rules" or suggestions as being situational. "If you’re doing a startup, you
should have less features than your competitors" may very well be good advice
for certain startups (or Musicwalla in this case) but it should not be
considered gospel for all startups.

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jarodlam
Agreed. I also feel like that blog post was incomplete and not constructive
enough. I think it's also important to highlight your core strengths and the
extra features is icing on the cake kind of thing.

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politician
Agreed, but the style of post appears to be characteristic of many on the site
-- slightly longer than a tweet.

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gfodor
I disagree. If the entire point of your product is that it adds a new but
differentiating layer of functionality to well known products already in the
marketplace this is a PHB friendly way of expressing that concept.

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frossie
Not just PHBs. In a crowded space, where users essentially choose you semi-
randomly, charts like that provide the user with some self-justification ("I
picked them because, err, they have more features!").

And anyway these kind of slides are always a bit of a sleight of hand. Every
software system has _some_ features others don't, just because, and those are
the ones cherry picked for this kind of slide. It doesn't necessarily mean
they are feverishly working on additional features.

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edoloughlin
I misread that as "The One Slide Startup" and thought it was a new lean
startup idea. Couldn't decide if it was a good or a bad thing.

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code_duck
The advice is essentially "'your startup should have less features than the
competition, because you're a startup". That would work well with being a one-
slide startup.

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porter
Probably a better distinction is that features are a short-term competitive
advantage, which should not be mistaken for structural, long-term advantages
that aren't easily copied. Investor's are much more interested in the latter.

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daw
They should have _fewer_ features, not less ... Grammar Nazi strikes!

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SoftwareMaven
I completely agree. In fact, as I read the title, my thought was "big list of
features" and was glad to see that was, in fact, what the article was
espousing.

You should never focus on features (even in a big company focusing on
enterprise sales). Focus on what customer pains you solve and how you solve
them. Features are a tertiary concern after that (and that includes both
presentations and product development/planning).

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uast23
The advice is more apt for B2C services where the users don't care about the
features - for example I don't care if Grooveshark lets me write a 140
character review for an album or not as long as it lets me listen to my
playlist; but for B2B, features are the core, aren't they! - for example if
there are two invoicing solutions, one which supports time tracking and one
which doesn't, I will definitely go for the former.

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freddealmeida
"listening to my playlist" is a feature.

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code_duck
I suppose one could argue this... but it's a pretty shallow rule of thumb.
Perhaps your competitors' offerings truly are incomplete, or you've manage to
pull off a product that includes more, effortlessly? Perhaps the items in the
list aren't that major?

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jroes
I think the idea behind the slide is to answer the question "Why would someone
use your service instead of another?" I think there are several approaches you
can take to answer such a question.

Maybe a solid approach is:

Take the list of features your competitors have. Subtract the features people
don't want Add the features that people are looking for that no one has.

If you implement more features, you don't necessarily have to implement them
poorly. Maybe you need a larger team or more time.

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joelmichael
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." - Albert
Einstein

~~~
freddealmeida
everything simple as possible, no simpler. - Albert (he used too many words)

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DeanCollinsLCC
I disagree, the features werent unreasonable, or minor splitting hair features
either.....

having said that.....their proposed business sounds crappy and will probably
fail, doesnt make peter right though :)

