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ICQ had the world in its hands.
It was the first dominant messaging app. Simple. Fast. Loved.
Then it added everything imaginable — games, toolbars, fancy plug-ins, endless settings.
The clean chat experience that made it great got buried under noise.
Users left. AIM took the teens. Skype took the adults.
ICQ tried to recover with “ICQ Lite,” but the market had already moved on.
That’s what feature bloat does. It kills the very thing people came for.
Product success has nothing to do with the number of features you ship. It only comes from one thing:
A painful problem solved so well that people pull your product into their lives.
Everything else is a distraction.
What You’ll Learn Today
Why feature bloat kills good products faster than competitors do.
How to spot the real cause of stalled growth. (Hint: it’s not missing features.)
Why “killer features” rarely save failing products.
How to shift from feature-thinking to outcome-thinking.
How to use pull signals—NOT shipping volume—to judge market fit.
The simple questions that expose whether a feature is worth building.
More Features Don’t Save You
When a product loses momentum, teams reach for the same easy answers:
“Let’s build more.”
“Let’s add something new.”
“Let’s match the competitor.”
“Let’s give users more options.”
ICQ tried that for years. But the more they added, the worse things got.
Because:
More features don’t make value clearer.
More features don’t fix weak market fit.
More features confuse users.
More features hide the real problem.
Adding features feels productive. It’s also the fastest way to bury your product.
The Killer Feature Fallacy
Quibi bet its entire future on a “killer” feature called Turnstyle — content that rotated smoothly between vertical and horizontal video.
Cool engineering. Hollywood production. Founded by Jeffrey Kazenberg of DreamWorks. Led by former Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman. Massive $1.75 billion investment.
It failed.
No one asked for it.
No one needed it.
No one cared.
Quibi’s real problem wasn’t that it needed a new feature. Its problem was that it solved nothing worth paying for.
A killer feature can’t save a product with no pull.
Products don’t fail because they’re missing one brilliant idea. They fail because the people building them stopped listening.
You push harder and harder on a door that only opens when pulled.
“But How Do I Know Until I Build It?”
You don’t.
And that’s fine.
This isn’t about never building.
It’s about building the least you need to prove you’re solving a real problem.
Some features are table stakes. Some reduce friction. Some unlock scale.
But none of them matter if your core value doesn’t land.
Nike learned this the hard way with the FuelBand.
The device was simple. But Nike didn’t stop there. They added:
A proprietary “NikeFuel” metric that confused people.
A fragmented app ecosystem.
Walls around their data.
A controlled, closed system.
Users couldn’t make sense of it.
Competitors like Fitbit made fitness tracking simple. Apple integrated everything into the phone people already used.
Nike built more. Competitors built clarity.
Guess who won.
Building Features Is Spending Money
Many founders, execs, and PMs miss this:
Every feature costs money.
Not just engineering. Not just design.
Everything.
Salaries.
Maintenance.
Support.
Bugs.
Complexity.
Debt.
Confusion.
Opportunity cost.
I once worked for a founder who demanded new features every week. Every idea went straight onto the roadmap.
By year-end, we had a pile of features.
And terrible results.
He had to ask investors for more money. They weren’t pleased.
You don’t run out of ideas before you run out of cash.
You run out of cash because you chase ideas instead of chasing truth.
You can’t spend your way to product success.
The Panic Loop: Where Products Go To Die
It always looks the same:
Sales slow.
Retention drops.
Usage flattens.
Leadership gets nervous.
Then the panic sets in:
“We need a dashboard.”
“Let’s match the competitor.”
“Let’s add something customers might want.”
I’ve been guilty of this. Almost every exec has.
But this instinct comes from fear, not strategy.
When you build out of fear, you don’t sharpen the product. You drown it.
Market fit isn’t a feature problem.
It’s a pull problem.
If the market doesn’t want what you have, nothing you add will fix it.
Build For Necessity, Not Volume
You’ve heard “build outcomes, not features.”
Here’s what that actually means.
Feature-thinking says: “Let’s build a dashboard.”
Outcome-thinking says: “Users need to understand their progress.”
Your job then is to build the smallest set of features that achieves that outcome.
Outcome-thinking forces focus.
It forces clarity.
It forces restraint.
Your job is not to impress people with volume.
Your job is to deliver value with precision.
What You Should Do Instead
Here are six moves that actually move you toward market fit and product success:
1. Shift from features to outcomes
Ask:
What problem am I solving?
Who feels this pain the most?
Why does solving it matter to the business?
How will I know it worked?
If you can’t answer these, don’t build.
2. Ask harder questions
Not to be difficult. To be responsible.
What’s the core problem?
What breaks if we don’t do this?
What value do we get if we build it?
How fast? At what cost?
Who cares about this?
Is this solving pain or just adding comfort?
If people get defensive, you’re close to the truth.
3. Go deep into the customer’s world
Understand:
Their workflow
Their tools
Their behavior
Their pain
Stop guessing.
Start observing.
4. Let data inform the shots
Quantitative and qualitative. Look at:
Usage
Activation
Retention
Drop-offs
Customer feedback
If people don’t use what you already built, more won’t save you.
Data reveals truth.
Bring it into the room.
5. Think smaller and smarter
You don’t need a big launch to learn.
Can you:
Prototype in a day?
Test with 5 users?
Ship a thin slice?
Validate the problem before building the solution?
Build to learn, not to ship.
6. Look for pull
Pull looks like:
Users coming back
Word of mouth
Customers hacking workarounds without abandoning
Inbound requests
Organic adoption
If you’re pushing everything uphill, you haven’t found fit yet.
Final Thoughts
ICQ tried to win with more features.
Quibi tried to win with expensive engineering.
Nike tried to win with clever complexity.
They all lost to competitors who focused on clarity, simplicity, and solving real pain.
The best products don’t win by doing more.
They win by doing the right things exceptionally well.
Product success isn’t something you buy.
It’s something the market gives you.
So before you add another item to your roadmap, ask:
“Does this solve a real problem, or am I just trying to feel busy?”
Busy doesn’t win.
Pull does.
One more question to keep you honest:
If you stopped building tomorrow, what would users actually miss?
That answer tells you everything you need to know about your product.
That’s all for this week.
Have a joyful week, and, if you can, make it joyful for someone else too.
cheers,
shardul
Here are 4 ways I can help you today:
Strategy Design Workshop: Transform scattered priorities into clear, actionable direction. I’ll facilitate your team through a customized workshop to align stakeholders and create strategies that actually get executed instead of forgotten. Book a call.
Product Management Audit: Get a clear picture of what’s working and what’s holding your team back. Through a systematic analysis, I’ll evaluate your strategy, processes, roles, metrics, and culture. You’ll walk away a practical set of findings and actionable recommendations to strengthen your product organization. Book a call.
Corporate Training: Elevate your entire product organization. I’ll teach your team how to think and act strategically, craft outcome-driven roadmaps, and dramatically improve how they deliver measurable results that matter to your business. Book a call.
Improv Based Team Building Workshop: Boost creativity, trust, and collaboration through improv. Your team will problem-solve faster and work better together. Book a call.
Shardul Mehta
I ❤️ product managers.