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?
The one slide your startup should never have in its deck.
21–30 of 31 posts
Re: The one slide your startup should never have in its deck.
#22I 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.
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.
Re: The one slide your startup should never have in its deck.
#23Unless you're selling to enterprise or the government.
Most enterprises and governments don't work with startups.
Re: The one slide your startup should never have in its deck.
#24Probably 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.
Re: The one slide your startup should never have in its deck.
#25I disagree. This type of slide can be useful for explaining where the startup fits.
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?"
Re: The one slide your startup should never have in its deck.
#26I 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 :)
Re: The one slide your startup should never have in its deck.
#27"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." - Albert Einstein
Re: The one slide your startup should never have in its deck.
#28I disagree. This type of slide can be useful for explaining where the startup fits.
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?"
Or, "Now why do I need i, j, and k?," which is sort of where you were going there ;)
Re: The one slide your startup should never have in its deck.
#29Re: The one slide your startup should never have in its deck.
#30The 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 form…
"listening to my playlist" is a feature.