There is always one more feature to succeed.

I advise start-up entrepreneurs of small IT businesses and noticed that such entrepreneurs have something in common. For example, it is very common to believe that the only thing that separates them from a well-deserved commercial success is the lack of a single feature. They think that as soon as they make this feature, sales will flow right away. Well, if they don’t, it may be because of that other feature that they don’t have, but which competitors have.


It's like a horizon, to which you can move until you run out of money or your interest disappears. I can say from my own experience that weak sales are almost always due to insufficient promotion. This fact, which is confirmed by research (Eng.). No matter how good your product is, if no one knows about it or you cannot persuade the people who have learned about the product to try it.

It is not surprising that entrepreneurs of small IT businesses are fixated on features. Such entrepreneurs usually start with the study of programming, learning to progress along the way. I have yet to meet someone who started with marketing and then learned how to program. Features and programming - this is what most of us in spirit and these classes seem to be “real work”. But too often, the soft embrace of your favorite IDE is just an excuse for not leaving the comfort zone. Of course, features are important. No features - no product. But if your site has low traffic and / or you don’t get to communicate with those who come to your site, then increasing the number of features will not help much. If you're in a hole, stop digging. Successfully promoting a product is to be unlike competitors. The lack of features can even be presented as a virtue. If your competitors have more features, then focus on the simplicity and availability of your product. 37Signals seems to have a similar approach.
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Marketing can show alien knowledge for the developer, but you can learn it just like any other skill. Information on this topic is enough. For example, Marketing for computer scientists by Eric Sink (Engl.). In addition, some elements of online marketing are actually quite technological. There is where to tinker with numbers. Analytics, split testing and Adwords will give you more data than you can digest. This can give developers a significant advantage compared to those who studied at a marketer, since most of the latter seem to be unable to master anything more complicated than a 2 by 2 matrix. You do not need to be a marketing genius, you just need to be better than your competitors. It’s like when attacking a lion: you don’t need to be able to run faster than a lion to survive, you just have to run faster than the rest. Considering that your competitors are likely to also be developers (who are probably not doing enough promotion) or marketers (who actually don't understand the program and are probably more interested in lengthy dinners), things may not be as difficult as they seem.