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

poorbuthappy.com

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

#2
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-..., 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.

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

#4
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.

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

#6
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."

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

#7
post #5

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.

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.

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

#8
post #6

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."

I agree completely. A "feature" for a user should just be part of the experience, not some bolt-on, selling feature.

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

#9
post #4

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.

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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