The Case For Simplicity

Great comment on Quora as to why dropbox beat out its competitors by Issac Hull who co-founded a competitor product called Synchplicity.

"After I left Syncplicity, I ran into the CEO of Dropbox and asked him my burning question: "Why don't you support multi-folder synchronization?" His answer was classic Dropbox. They built multi-folder support early on and did limited beta testing with it, but they couldn't get the UI right. It confused people and created too many questions. It was too hard for the average consumer to setup. So it got shelved."

Hull suggests that no matter how loudly your users may want functionality, if it doesn't work for at least 80% of your users then it isn't worth it.

I think this is a lesson in marketing that can never be stated too often - fewer, smarter, better. Middle gray or just being good is a sure path to failure. No matter how big or small your budget is, be brilliant or be gone.

At the end of the day, it's the business case for simplicity.