The Shiny New Feature Trap

Every founder falls in love with the new.
The next idea. The next feature. The next thing that will finally make the graph bend upward.

We weren’t different.
We built, shipped, and stacked features like poker chips.
Some landed, most flopped.

Then we noticed something strange.

One feature — just one — had 90% adoption.
Users loved it. They stuck with it. They shared it.

And what did we do?
We ignored it.

We told ourselves: “Cool, that’s working. Now let’s chase something else.”

That was the trap.

Why Founders Chase the Shiny

The founder brain is restless. It feeds on novelty. Building new things feels like progress.

• Shipping = dopamine.

• Adding = control.

• More = safer.

But here’s the paradox: the more features we added, the more diluted everything became. The product grew heavier. The story less clear.

We were running on the treadmill of “just one more thing.”

When the Data Spoke

At some point, we stopped theorizing and started looking.

Feature A: 90% adoption.
Feature B: 12%.
Feature C: 5%.
Feature D: statistically invisible.

The numbers were screaming at us.

But we were deaf. Because chasing newness felt like vision. Doubling down on an existing feature felt boring.

And that’s the mistake: confusing novelty with innovation.

The Discipline of Doubling Down

Once we humbled ourselves to listen, the path was obvious:

• Promote what’s working.

• Refine what’s working.

• Scale what’s working.

We turned Feature A into the product’s centerpiece. Every onboarding highlighted it. Every marketing campaign showcased it. We asked: “How can this one feature do more?” instead of “What else can we build?”

The result? Growth bent upward. Not because of more features, but because we finally stopped distracting ourselves.

The Graveyard of Orphan Features

Let’s be honest: every product has a graveyard. Tabs nobody clicks. Buttons nobody remembers. Workflows nobody completes.

Those features represent founder ego, not user demand.
They live because we built them, not because anyone asked for them.

Each new shiny feature makes the graveyard bigger. Each orphan makes the product heavier.

Users don’t care about your graveyard. But they feel the weight of it.

The Pattern Across Startups

Look at every breakout product:

• Slack: doubled down on messaging, not task management.

• Dropbox: doubled down on syncing, not file editing.

• Notion: doubled down on docs + databases before touching AI.

The winners weren’t those who built the most. They were those who obsessed over the one thing that clicked.

The Trap in Pitch Decks

Here’s another way shiny features kill: they look great in slides.

Founders love roadmaps with six new features. Investors nod along. It looks ambitious.

But the market doesn’t reward ambition. It rewards adoption.

No user cares about your V3 feature list. They care about the one thing you solve perfectly today.

What We Learned About Focus

1. Adoption is the compass. Track what’s used, not what’s shipped.

2. Depth beats breadth. Make one feature indispensable before adding another.

3. Kill early. If a feature doesn’t catch after repeated exposure, bury it. Don’t carry the dead.

4. Resist novelty bias. Progress doesn’t always mean building. Sometimes it means polishing.

Why This Is Hard

Because doubling down feels like standing still. It feels less “visionary.” It feels like you’re not doing enough.

But in reality, doubling down is the highest-leverage move. It’s doing more of what already works, not gambling on what might.

The hard part isn’t building more. The hard part is saying no.

The Moment of Clarity

I remember the turning point. We had just shipped yet another shiny add-on. Adoption was dismal. Nobody cared.

Then a user told us:
“I don’t even know what this new thing does. But I use [Feature A] every single day. That’s why I stay.”

It hit like a gut punch. We were ignoring the obvious.

We stopped sprinting for newness. We sprinted to make Feature A unignorable.

The Outcome

• Engagement doubled.

• Retention improved.

• Growth turned from fragile to repeatable.

Not because of brilliance. Not because of invention. But because we stopped being idiots chasing shiny distractions.

Avoidable Takeaways

• The shiny new feature trap is real.

• Founders overvalue novelty and undervalue focus.

• Data can save you — if you listen to it.

• Growth doesn’t come from more. It comes from amplifying what already works.

A Warning for Builders

If you’re staring at your roadmap right now, pause. Ask yourself:

• What’s my Feature A?

• Do I even know?

• Am I polishing it to brilliance—or ignoring it while I chase the next dopamine hit?

Because the truth is brutal: one killer feature is worth more than ten shiny duds.

Closing

The shiny new feature trap cost us months. It almost buried our traction.

But the lesson was simple, almost embarrassingly so:
When something works, do more of it.

Everything else is noise.