Today I was helping/advising/confusing a close friend on her new startup. I was trying to be diligent about not offering advice but rather leading a conversation to discover what her core business was vs. the extra features she was adding to attract users.

In the past I’ve wrote fairly extensively on my disdain of fluff features - but certainly some are necessary. When it comes to features I like to ask, ” what features are necessary to test if the idea will work” - if they’re not necessary I toss them aside.

Fortunately my friend is very smart and understood how the feature frenzy could be a detriment to testing the core business. What I think people don’t realize generally is that compounding features make it hard to ‘fail fast’ and could cause you more harm than good. If you’re pursing and idea that ultimately won’t work, don’t you want to know that ASAP?!