Many passionate entrepreneurs fight to add more features into their new products and services, assuming that more function will make the solution more appealing to more customers. In reality, more features will more likely make the product confusing and less usable to all, and such attempts could end up destroying your business. Focus is the art of limiting your scope to the key function that really matters for the majority of customers.
There are a host of reasons why a non-focused startup business is more likely to struggle for survival, lose market and investor attention, and miss out on the opportunity to capitalize on their scope. Let us take a look at six wrong things you are doing that are slowly destroying your business:
1). Time to market is tied to the size of your offering. In many business domains today, the market seems to change about every ninety days. With the current low cost of entry, nimble competitors appear quickly and seize the high ground of your existing customers and potential. No startup can implement a broad strategy quickly enough to stay ahead.
2). Broad product offerings require too much infrastructure. More money is hard to find, and building efficient multiple processes is even harder. Every aspect of every product requires development, testing, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution. The probability of failure goes up exponentially as the number of product features increase.
3). It’s tough for an elephant to be agile. Every successful startup has pivoted a couple of times, as they learn what really works in the marketplace and in the sales process. Did you know that both YouTube and Facebook started out to be dating sites? Even IBM, with their personal computer, had trouble making their elephant dance.
Is it better to buy a running business or start your own from scratch?
4). Ongoing market leadership requires continuous innovation. The initial larger cost in time and dollars is only the beginning. The first-to-market advantage doesn’t last long. You need continuous innovation in all elements of your product line to stay ahead, or your startup will be quickly left in the dust, and for you to avoid inadvertently destroying your business.
5). Marketing a product with too many features is self-defeating. It’s almost impossible to craft a memorable message that has more than three bullets. The more you try to capitalize on the breadth and depth of your solution, the more people don’t get the message at all, and settle for a competitor that focuses on their personal hot-button.
6). Your personal bandwidth is quickly exceeded. When your solution has too many elements, even you can’t keep the priorities straight, and your team gets frustrated, tired, loses motivation, and tends to not do anything well. You will end up destroying your business. As a new entrepreneur in a new startup, it’s better to walk before you try to run.
