We should keep the product simple

KISS (Keep It simple, stupid) principle is a basic principle to improve the success rate of the start-up enterprise. In an article, Influitive, vice president of business development, Victor Belfor, once again explains the importance of small companies having to keep their products simple.

He was the starter of a friend's start-up in a bid for a big company. The unnamed big company is a leader in a field, and his friend's small company's product has no more than 1/10 of the functionality of a large company. In the eyes of big companies, it may not be a competitor to his friend's company. But his friend's start-up has won.

And why?

With the maturing of the product, the growing company will continue to contribute to the product in the white-hot competition with rivals. Investors and stakeholders need to see steady growth in earnings to keep share prices climbing. However, in fact many customers only need a small subset of the functionality of the product. The integration of more and more products is like a large dinosaur, heavy and difficult to use. But still, these companies will develop machines that are capable of processing.

As a result, there will always be small companies springing up, their products adhering to the principle of good enough, low prices can let the bottom of the customer also affordable, and then the share of large companies are constantly eroded. The comfort of a big company is that it doesn't matter, those are the shrimp-grade customers, and the price is not low. Then the big companies focus on their own high-end market, and small companies have their foothold, and then gradually introduce new features, and then slowly become big companies. The process repeats itself.

Examples abound. This is how PCs are subverted to mainframes. Japanese cars and electric vehicles to subvert the United States car is also the case, and then Japan was South Korea and China's car companies subversion. Merrill Lynch was subverted by Ka-Shin and electronic commerce. The operators were overturned by Skype, Visa and Mastercard were overthrown by the Square, and Cisco was nearly overthrown by WebEx (which was avoided by acquisitions), but now it is being subverted by Citrix and LogMeIn. The smartphone's camera is a reversal of Nikon and Kodak.

(The ability of consumers to digest the speed of the technology development, for the latter brought market opportunities)

The process of low-end subversion has been perfectly interpreted in Clayton Christensen's dilemma of innovators and the DNA of innovators. Victor Belfor that the process is now much faster. In other words, the company's heels may be overturned. The rapid pace of innovation we have experienced, coupled with the low cost of start-up companies and the limited amount of venture capital, has led to a large number of start-ups fighting close melee to survive. The image below is a perceptual map of the photo-sharing service He found a few years ago:

There are many companies in this field. Many are not listed in the chart: IPhoto, 500px, Tumblecloud, Skitch and ACD, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on. Each of these services has its own differentiated advantage, but presumably not many customers with more than 2 services. So here's the trade-off. Customers tend to choose a service that best suits most of their needs and is good enough for the rest. You want to manage albums with Picasa. Facebook, who wants to share photos with friends. Use Instagram on your cell phone, and so on. Then we went back to where we were. All companies, big or small, should consider "good enough" competitors.

So what do we do?

1. Find out what most customers in your plate think are the most important features. This requires customer discovery and makes it the focus of your value orientation. Make it amazing.

2. Think about the competitors in your field. It's not just the competitors that are directly competing with your product, but also the ability to solve the same customer needs.

3. If the company size becomes bigger, also must vigorously maintain the low-end user. More importantly, subvert yourself. Publish a low-end version of your product-stripping out certain features and keeping costs down (see Apple's latest move, IPad

Mini and the legendary low-end version of the IPhone. Of course it's hard to subvert yourself. But rather than waiting for others to subvert themselves, why not grasp the fate of their own?

In addition, there is one thing to go into the market strategy. A very clear service (or excessive service) market segment must be identified as a target. If such a market cannot be found, create one!