Entrepreneurship most of the time starts from the ground. Either you have a brand new product or you do not have enough money to create costly products. It is often tough to break into the market that is full of products that offer everything under the sun.
That brings a very important question to the entrepreneur's mind. How does he or she create a product/service that stands apart from the current deluge of products in the market?
I was pondering on the question just before I got a comment from a friend (Hemanth Kumar)on another blog of mine, which has documentation for a WordPress plugin, which I once created. He commented that he liked my plugin because it is lesser cluttered than the most popular plugin in the marketplace.
Isn't that a great differentiator?
We think people are looking for hotshot products, full of features, supports everything that can be thought of. There is often a small user base that expects the opposite. These users do not want your product to do everything or connected to all interfaces or support all platform. They are just looking for solution to their specific needs. They probably do not need all the razzmatazz and like to keep things less complicated.
Companies pack in features, in the hope that market will respond to their game of one extra feature above the competitor. It does sometimes, but then those companies have to spend time first creating those features and then supporting them. It all adds up to the overall cost. This process is not very suitable for entrepreneur.
That brings us back to the question about creating any product/service in a cluttered market. The important thing is the product positioning and not the number of features. As an entrepreneur, you already have the limitation that you cannot be all for all. So starting with a limited set of features and finding a market for those is more useful. Competing with "big boys" is only going to hurt you eventually.
Thus use de-cluttering as a strategic tool for your product offering.
I think you should just create a product in the way you think it should be and your users will find you and they will like the product you have created.
Very often the KISS approach is very successful. It may sound like something from the past, but it is not. Your targeted clientele could play a role too.
I have never actually thought about that – about offering less features and getting more specific. You are right. Now that I think about, I also think that the mainstream is looking for solutions they can work (they want simple ones, of course, many features are good, but that only makes it complicated).
Just like the philosophy with blog posts, right? (We need to keep them simple and focused!).
I feel your kindle book would be awesome :). Entrepreneurs on low budget can do only one thing. Develop simple solutions. Not only the development time is less but maintenance costs are lower too.
That's probably why I've yet to create a product Ashvini. I know that my readers have been very supportive of me saying that what I would share would be more valuable because I'm walking the talk as they all watch me so they would love to get their hands on something in even more detail that could help them.
Sometimes I feel that the market is to saturated with all the same stuff and I don't want all that pressure on me to create something fabulous. Maybe someday I'll finally jump in but probably by that time everyone will be past that.
Thanks for this post, I can relate so much. By the way, I still haven't had an opportunity to look at what you shared with me. I'm hoping that this weekend will be my first to actually have time to catch up on everything I'm so behind on because of my Mom's move. But, I can't wait to dive in.
Have an awesome weekend Ashvini.
Ashvini, Actually geeky users look for more features even though they wont use those features, normal users look for a specific features what they need. In my view normal users are huge in the market than geeky guys. At last presentation matters.
I agree that competing with "big boys" will hurt, If your small try to target the small guys around you, they will notice you and its a win for you. I believe this strategy. Thanks for post based on my comment.