The one slide your startup should never have in its deck.

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.

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.

This is as bad as the "ideas are worthless" meme, which is taken too literally by some. Sure, there are some products where you should push the benefits, but that doesn't mean that you should ignore the features. The more knowledgeable a market is, the more they want to know about features.