Simpler Is Better!

Don't let complexity erode your advantage as a startup

Two of the biggest advantages startups have over larger competitors is focus and speed. As your company grows, you must fight the natural tendencies toward complexity which mitigate these attributes. Keep things simple.

Complexity can creep into your business in all kinds of ways resulting in overly convoluted products, marginal features, internal confusion, marketing sprawl, friction with customers, halitosis and the heartbreak of psoriasis. Ok maybe not those last two. But simpler is better.

Many high-IQ founders and executives have a high tolerance for complexity. They can hold a complex business model and software architectures in their head like a game of 3D chess. But just because you can entertain complicated ideas doesn’t mean you should make them part of your business.

Canva, Duo Security, Dropbox, Figma, Hubspot, MongoDB, MySQL, Slack, QuickBooks, Zendesk, Zoom all grew faster than competitors because of the clear focus and simplicity of their products.

Simpler products are easier to adopt, gain traction faster and are, ironically, harder to dislodge. “It just works” is a hallmark not only of good design, but a strategy that few companies seem able to pull off.

People would sometimes criticize MySQL because it had fewer features than Oracle or SQL Server, not understanding that this was feature, rather than a bug. MySQL’s simplicity is what made it popular with the growing ranks of web developers. We had a “fifteen minute rule” that defined the maximum time it should take for someone to get MySQL up and running. Compared to the days and weeks it took to configure Oracle, this was a compelling advantage for busy web developers. Not only that, you could download it and use it for free under an open source license.

That combination of ease of use and ease of adoption turned out to be a great way to build momentum, and MySQL soon became the world’s most popular open source database.

Similarly, Zendesk trumpeted its “beautifully simple” design which provided an elegant consumer experience compared to the bloated set features of traditional Enterprise software which looked more like a smorgasbord designed by IT buyers who wanted to check the box of every feature anyone had ever heard of. As Zendesk, and other companies proved, sometimes less is more.

It Takes Work To Keep Things Simple

But like entropy, over time, simple products and businesses tend towards complexity. You hire more people, so you add more managers. You have more teams and you have to spend more time coordinating between them. You add more features and now you need more documentation, more training. You create different editions of your product targeting different segments and now you need to explain the benefits and justify the different tiers.

Customers love the ease of use, but they want more features, more customization. You integrate with third party products and now you’ve got way more configuration settings.

Every manager wants to put their own imprint on things, resulting in more and more complexity. More rules, more approvals, more friction, more meetings. More, more, more. If you’re not careful, you can find yourself losing the advantages you once had as a startup.

At Zendesk, we faced a moment of reckoning where we recognized our product had gotten too complex. As is often the case, the proof came about when we started to lose deals to an upstart competitor, Freshdesk, whose product was cheaper, faster and less complicated. We were used to being the disruptor, the company that made things easy. If we weren’t easier, what the heck were we?

The founders were incensed. Rather than dig their heels in and defend the past, they agreed that our product had indeed become too complicated. Many of our Enterprise features were adding complexity to our small and mid-market customers. Like the frog in the warm water that starts to heat up, we’d accepted each new level of complexity and failed to question where it was taking us.

Morten and Alex went off with a small group of engineers and re-worked many parts of our user interface to reduce complexity and improve our performance. We made the user interface, easier, snappier and more fun.

It worked. We regained our mojo. The founders were rightly proud of the improvements, even if it took a competitive kick-in-the-ass to get the work started.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened to Zendesk if we had not fought back against complexity. We might have ended up in a no-man’s land of not being easy enough to drive SMB adoption and product-led growth, and not enough Enterprise customization to compete against the big guys. What would have been the compelling advantage?

To fight against complexity, you must ensure that there is internal recognition of the value of simplicity. Every time you face a decision that adds complexity, you should ask yourself whether it’s worth it.

If you can’t convey your competitive advantage, your pricing, your support policies, your partner programs without a five minute discussion, you need to pare things back and simplify. No one really cares about how you came up with the bronze, silver, gold levels in your program, they just want good service.

When someone visits your web site, within ten seconds they should know whether your product is for them or not, what problem you solve and how you do it better than anyone else. Believe me, even your mother doesn’t want to wade through architectural diagrams to understand what it is you do.

Ten Tips To Prune Complexity

Complexity grows like weeds in a garden. There is no single cure to avoid its gradual invasion. I have listed some examples that may help you recognize impending complexity in all its flavors.

• Avoid matrix management. Everyone should have exactly one boss.

• Be clear who has responsibility to make a decision and who has input.

• The best sales compensation plans are the simplest.

• The best pricing models are familiar and predictable to customers.

• Selling through partners is harder than selling directly.

• Referral programs that pay fees are very rarely worth it.

• Forecasting with multi-variate analysis may or may not be more accurate than two scenarios called “likely” and “best case,” but it will certainly take longer.

• Expand one geographic region at a time so you can learn as you go.

• A 20 question form or survey is probably not better than one with 7 questions.

• Don’t over-negotiate contract terms you can live with. Payment and liability terms matter, but many other terms don’t.

As you grow your company, you want to hire people who possess what I call “the simplifying gene.” They are able to distill complicated situations down to the essence and come up with solutions that address 90% of the situations. Often the added complexity of corner cases creates an unnecessary burden for everyone. (Most legal contracts are all about corner cases!) Sometimes the best thing to do is ignore those situations and optimize for the most common cases.

Whenever you add new features, new products or new processes, always think through the operational details. Consider the testing, the ongoing maintenance, training, marketing required. Ask yourself whether the additional complexity is worth it.

We’ve all seen products that started off easy and over time lost it as they added more and more capabilities. Don’t let the corner cases screw things up. And every once in a while, go back and streamline the most common situations.

The photo at the top of the post is, of course, the rock band KISS back in their glam rock heyday. If ever there was a band that knew to keep it simple, stupid, it was them.