The (Easy) Fallacy of One-Feature Companies

I recently tried out the Sorted app - with a mind to improve my task and meeting scheduling. At first glance the application - available on Mac and iOS - proved quite rewarding. In particular, its "Auto Schedule" feature caught my attention.

But with time, I became more and more disappointed. After trying to use the app to ramp up my productivity, I realized that I had, unfortunately, become enthralled with a one-feature product - and thus with a one-feature company.

In the case of Sorted - this feature was quite cool, but it wasn’t enough. Many teams and companies fall into the easy fallacy of “one cool feature.”

Why the one feature is cool

It is important to note from the outset that product features, and by extension company products and services, are hugely important in a firm's overall success. Offering clients a single, unique service or a product with a defining feature can provide a great advantage.

One-feature products start out with a leg up on their rivals - especially if that feature is a so-called "killer feature." The single-minded focus that results in a tool or application with a distinctive feature helps to differentiate a company from its competitors. The stand-out aspect of a product makes it easy to promote and can create a clear sense of pride and accomplishment among the team that helped to bring it to life. There is no greater rallying cry for a startup team than to be able to say, "We built X - the only one that does Y."

If the single, defining feature of a product or service directly contributes to the company's revenue it takes on even more significance. This may be seen in particular where the killer feature is part of the paid plan in a freemium SaaS model. Give users a good taste of the killer feature and they will most likely be willing to pay for the product.

The fallacy of one killer feature

But a killer (lucrative) feature can be both a blessing and a curse... On the one hand, it can drive revenue and company identity. It is the seed that great products grow from.

But when a company becomes too conservative and reluctant to make needed updates or changes to its one killer feature - for fear of upsetting loyal customers and potentially ruining a good thing, that feature loses its power.

Inertia isn’t the only enemy. With any luck, a new and innovative feature may turn out to be so revolutionary that others are forced to imitate it. When copycats do pop up, the flattery they offer by mimicking the existing product only reinforces the feeling of leadership and strength among the original team members.

But as Snapchat learned quite well after Facebook and Instagram copied its disappearing stories feature, being first to launch a new feature does not guarantee perpetual superiority. Tech teams are smart enough and agile enough to quickly find a way to nullify early-mover advantage.

And so if a company hangs its hat on one single feature - it risks finding itself left in the dust by a larger and better-funded competitor.

Growing up - and out

Recognizing the fact that you are a one-feature company is good - moving beyond that state is more difficult.

The first urge is to quickly add more features, whatever they may be. 'More is better' may be true in some circumstances, but in this case this approach too often leads to the addition of mediocre or unnecessary layers. Unfortunately, too often the next round of features are not original and mirror existing features of close rivals, while at the same time adding to the codebase (or a company's head-count). More complexity without more value-add is a recipe for stagnation.

Sorted's List and Inbox features fit this category. There is nothing inherently wrong with them - but they do not enhance the app's one core distinctive feature in any meaningful way.

If anything they reinforce the fact that Sorted is basically is a one-show circus with several extras that almost every other productivity application also offers. It is highly likely that the product team at Sorted integrated Lists, Tags and other "sorting and organizing functionalities" because they felt users would expect them. That is all fine and well, but additional features can and must reinforce the uniqueness of a product or company's 'one killer feature' - otherwise it will end up on the dust-heap of history.

Killing it - the Apple way

Apple stands in stark contrast to this paradigm. When Steve Jobs launched the iPod, he marketed it as a killer piece of hardware, combined with a superior software advantage.

And he was right.

But Jobs did not rest on his laurels. Based on the success of the iPod and its focused value proposition: "1,000 songs in your pocket" - Jobs and the Apple teams expanded on the core element of their competitive advantage (an all-in-one device with access to many different types of media) to grow the overall business.

Here we come to a key element of escaping the "one-feature" fallacy - iterate on the feature to move into other high-value areas of a customer's life.

Once Apple had accustomed its clients to an "all-in-one experience" - Jobs and company were able to move quickly to expand on this theme, leading to the invention of the iPhone. In his now-immortal Macworld presentation of the first iPhone in 2007, Jobs showcased it as a 3-in-1 device: an iPod, an internet access point and a phone.

But the iPhone was not the only "extension" of Apple's killer feature which the company was able to exploit. With a loyal user base that expected easy access to media, Apple also developed the App Store - with its thousands (if not millions) of useful applications, each with its own killer feature, that suddenly put extreme power in the pocket of users.

In this way, Apple took its small set of superior features and exploited the most advantageous aspects at its disposal (plus its vertical control of the entire Apple ecosystem - hardware, software and applications) to build a truly indomitable business model.

If Jobs had been dumb - which he obviously was not - he would have clung to his advantage in media distribution and focused on ways to maximize the advantage of the iPod.

Instead, he and Apple looked beyond the killer product they had built and ended up much farther ahead than anyone could have imagined.

Companies and startup teams who start out with one or more key (distinctive) features or products would do well to follow the Apple model.