Optimise for the problems you want to have
Do half the things you want to do. Develop half the features you want to do, offer half the options you want to offer, focus on half the market you want to go after.
Scott Belsky, Adobe, Behance
But how to know which half?
Optimize for the problems you want to have. The problem you actually want is someone using the product, solving their problem, getting real value out of it, and then saying "if it would only have X as well".
Those are the features you want to do later. Focus first on the things that prevent people from caring to ask you to implement more features.
If the product fails it won't be because you didn't have that one feature. If it failed, it failed because you didn't do the core of the product right.
However, leaving out the features that only look valuable, then focusing that effort on making the existing features fit narrow needs, is how the core gets to be right.
If more features made a product better, every app would have every feature.
It's the same reason why "always leave them wanting more" works in showbusiness.
He also calls this the first mile experience
In the first 30 seconds of any product usage, your users are lazy, vain and selfish.
A user doesn't want a learning curve, they want to get it done. They want immediate value and success without reading long manuals or tutorials.
Almost every product I've seen was designed for the user it hopes to have in month three, not the one deciding in the first thirty seconds whether there will be a month three.
If you want more on this, the whole episode is worth the time.
Lessons on building product sense, navigating AI, optimizing the first mile, and making it through the messy middleScott Belsky on Lenny's Podcast.lennysnewsletter.com