Startup SuperPowers 1.0

The Superpower to Simplify

“Complexity impedes communication within teams, with early investors, with customers, complexity slows development, complexity slows adoption and complexity can kill your start-up from the inside.”

Complexity is your enemy.

Over years of building teams and developing software products, I’ve come to realize that a true Superpower that is wildly valuable to have on your startup team is somebody who is highly skilled at “simplifying the complex”.

Sounds easy.

Software and systems by definition are complex… as you go deeper into more advanced stacks around AI, Fintech, Web3, deep-tech etc….the complexity compounds.

Start-ups are able to move fast and deliver… in direct correlation to the team and constituent’s ability to fully understand and grok the goal-at-hand and what the future benefit/impact will be, translating that to rapid product iteration and validation.

In my own experience, it is usually a Sr. Product Manager who possesses this rare and exceptional skill of being able to “simplify the complex” for the team. Only one single time over 6+ companies where I was founder/CEO did I experience a senior engineering lead who had this rare skill…and in this case the technical/product complexity was becoming so deep that, for the sake of his own engineering team who were getting completely lost — he took it upon himself to “simplify the complex” and bring clarity to the team.

The unnecessary complexity I’m talking about typically emerges in either:

• The definition of the problem being solved
• The product design to achieve the objective
• The technical architecture required to deliver the product

Unnecessary complexity at any of these stages can and will kill your ability to move fast and deliver product as a start-up.

Similarly, as a start/up founder you have to be hyper-aware of team members who naturally gravitate towards complexity.

What the hell does this mean?

This occurs most often in your engineering team… but I’ve seen it also happen across PM’s and even the business/founders.

Engineers want to work on cool shit.

Super complex tech is much cooler than a simple single-purpose set of code that is wildly efficient. Over and over again I’ve seen start-up engineers, especially at the earliest stages — who create a blueprint for a Tesla when all that is needed is a bicycle.

To be clear…this will kill your startup.

Not to pick on engineers however, as I’ve see founders/business team do the exact same thing and add layers of complexity that completely cloud and confuse the single task at-hand….to solve a well identified problem.

The humans who have this superpower are able to create and articulate an ultra-simple product vision/mission and a similarly simple technical approach to how the team can deliver a laser-focused solution that delivers on that vision.

I’ve come to believe that there is simply some rare genetic strain within certain start-up founders/team/members wherein they understand that Simplicity is key, enabling, empowering and absolutely crucial at the early stages. That is their SuperPower.

-MD