We Added Too Many Features and Killed Our Focus

Hey friends,

This one stings.

It’s the kind of lesson you don’t want to learn in real time—but we did. And if you're building a product or running a company right now, I hope this saves you from learning it the hard way too.

Let’s talk about something not enough founders admit:
We added too many features. We killed our focus. And it almost killed our momentum.

Let me walk you through how it happened.

It Started with Good Intentions… Like It Always Does

As a SaaS founder, you’re wired to build. Every new customer conversation feels like an opportunity to improve the product. And when you're scaling fast, there's this pressure (internal and external) to “keep up” with the market.

So we did what felt right:

• Added that extra workflow a big customer wanted

• Built an edge-case toolset to win a competitive deal

• Rushed features to hit parity with other platforms

It looked impressive on a demo. But what we didn’t see immediately was the slow erosion of our clarity—both internally and externally.

The Warning Signs Were Subtle… Until They Weren’t

At first, it felt like traction. We were shipping faster than ever. Sales team loved the flashy updates. Churn was low.

But then:

• Our onboarding NPS dropped

• Fewer customers fully activated within their first 30 days

• Feature adoption hit all-time lows

• The support team flagged confusion in the knowledge base

One message from a longtime user hit me hard:

“I love you guys, but I’m honestly not sure what you do anymore.”

That line stuck with me.

We didn’t lose this customer because of bugs. We lost them because we stopped standing for something clear. We traded identity for optionality.

The Realization: We’d Become a “Nice-to-Have Everything”

Here’s what I didn’t see at the time:
Adding more features didn’t make us better. It made us blurry.

And blurry doesn’t win.

Customers don’t remember 20 things you can do.
They remember one thing you do exceptionally well—the thing that saves them time, makes them money, or helps them sleep at night.

We weren’t becoming indispensable. We were becoming optional.

So we paused. As a team. As a company. We forced a reset.

Raising money didn’t make us smarter—it made our mistakes louder.

This wasn’t a light brainstorming session. This was a full-on, close-the-laptops, cancel-the-meetings, gut-check moment.

Here’s what we did:

1. Talked to our top 20% of users
We dug into why they chose us in the first place. What features they loved. What pain we actually solved.

The pattern was clear: our most valuable users were using 20% of our product.

2. Killed 8 features
Not sunset. Not deprecated. Killed.
It was hard. But it gave our team space to refine, not patch. Improve, not react.

3. Rebuilt the positioning from scratch
We reframed our core promise. Rethought how we show up in demos. Rewrote the onboarding flows.

4. Realigned the team
Engineers got their momentum back. Support could focus training on what truly mattered. Marketing found its voice again.

The True Cost of Trying to Serve Too Many Use Cases

Here’s what I’ve learned through all of this:

Feature bloat doesn’t just slow down development. It kills clarity.

• It distracts your team. Your roadmap becomes reactive.

• It confuses your users. They hesitate because they don’t know where to start.

• It weakens your message. Your marketing speaks to everyone—and lands with no one.

• It lowers LTV. Customers never fully adopt. They churn not because you’re bad—because you’re “meh.”

And worst of all:
It makes you forget who you’re building for.

Here’s What I Believe Now

As a CEO, one of your core responsibilities is to protect the focus of the company.

That means:

• Saying no to good ideas

• Walking away from tempting use cases

• Sticking to the vision, even when it’s less “shiny”

• Building deep, not wide

The best SaaS products don’t win because they do more. They win because they do one thing better than anyone else.

That’s how they earn loyalty.
That’s how they scale.
That’s how they become category-defining.

My Final Thought (And a Challenge to You)

If you’re building right now—pause and ask:

• What do our best users love about us?

• Are we making that part even better—or distracting ourselves?

• Would someone new know what we’re best at within 30 seconds?

If you don’t like your answers, don’t wait until your roadmap is bloated and your customers are confused. Reclaim your focus before the market forces it on you.

We learned it the hard way.
But we came out stronger.

And I genuinely believe—simplification is a growth strategy.

You don’t scale by stacking features. You scale by standing for something sharp.

More soon,

Angelo