A Killer Feature or a Killer Collection of Features

This one’s a tough one because you won’t know until you’re successful but the best products have a killer feature or a killer collection of features. The distinction here is terribly important as some products only need one killer feature (e.g. automatically identifying companies on your website) while other products need a collection of features that when combined make it a killer product (e.g. any one feature of Basecamp isn’t nearly as useful as the collection of features).

A killer collection of features is one of the main reasons we see feature creep in products as well as startups in stealth mode for an extended period of time — the entrepreneur/product manager believes it needs substantial functionality to be useful. These are the most common startups that die because they take so long to validate.

A killer collection of features is more difficult for several reasons:

• The functionality takes longer to build resulting in a greater chance of running out of money
• With more functionality comes more friction to adoption and understanding
• The chance of adding useless features grows while the chicken and egg problem of needing happy customers without a killer collection of features grows

My recommendation is to think hard about your killer feature or your killer collection of features necessary for success. The latter is much more difficult to achieve but is more commonly found.

What else? What other thoughts do you have on killer features vs killer collections of features?