More is Less

I just listened to the Inside the Net episode with Jason Fried of 37 Signals. He made this very profound statement during the interview:

The [fewer] features you have, the bigger your market actually is. Every time you add something new to your product, in many ways you're actually reducing your market size.

Basically, this sums up the 37 Signals philosophy when it comes to product development. Although Jason is specifically referring to software, this statement often applies to non-tech products.

I've used Basecamp and Backpack for several months now. They are incredibly simple apps. I'm actually now using Backpack instead of a PDA for my business to do list. The main reason is the speed at which I can make adjustments. No more tapping and clicking just to keep my to do list up to date (which sometimes seems like it is changing by the minute -- see previous post). No, I can't set priorities or alarms, but the speed at which I can edit and make changes, not to mention the screen size of my 19" monitor versus my PDA, makes Backpack a much simpler solution.