Feature-Itis

An AI Affliction

A founder I know spent months on his app. Not months building the core thing. Months after that. Tweaking, polishing, adding features nobody asked for, fixing bugs introduced by features nobody asked for. He spent weeks creating a launch video. Actually, a good one. Posted it to his brand new social profile.

Two likes.

No shame in that. But hardly worth the effort.

Here’s what actually happened: he didn’t have a distribution problem. He had a math problem. A brand-new profile, with any quality of content, equals nobody seeing it.

But here’s the part that keeps me up at night on his behalf. Every week he spent in feature mode was a week the product got objectively worse for the users he didn’t have yet. The thing that was supposed to be good is now quietly broken in three places while he’s busy building a fourth room onto a house nobody’s visited.

Feature-itis looks like diligence from the inside. You’re working. You’re shipping. The Jira board is moving. But it’s a form of hiding. As long as there’s one more thing to add, you don’t have to face the market yet.

The market, though, doesn’t care how long you spent. It will tell you what it needs if you let it. And what it tells you is always simpler than what you think it needs.

Find the demand first.

Build the simplest possible solution.

The product will reveal itself.

What’s one feature you could cut to launch sooner?