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Key Takeaways Don’t mistake complexity for sophistication. The best solution isn’t always the most feature-rich one — it’s the one that democratizes access to the most valuable features, so more people can use them.
When you’re too close to your product, you become a perfectionist and end up designing needlessly complicated systems that ignore the customer’s real needs.
A comprehensive solution hides its complexity behind intuitive UX, expands the user base from specialists to everyday operators and makes difficult problems feel easy to solve.
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my career is not to mistake complexity for sophistication.
I’ve always been a tinkerer. Before I ran PhoneBurner, my current company that streamlines dialing for outbound teams, I used to stay up until the small hours of the morning in my home workshop just trying to build things from scratch. Back then, I wasn’t even sure I wanted tech to be my career. I just knew I was interested in creating things that solved problems.
Some of the things I created ended up being pretty useful. One was an app that sat on top of CRM systems to help users visualize data more easily. Today, user-friendly reporting features are a de facto requirement for this kind of software, but that wasn’t always the case. It used to be that you needed deep technical knowledge to parse the info CRMs collected.
Of course, that also meant fewer people were able to use them. A decade ago, when CRMs were less user-friendly, the global market was worth just over $26 billion. By contrast, most current estimates put it at over $100 billion.
My point is: The best solution isn’t always the most feature-rich one. It’s the one that democratizes access to the most valuable features, so more people can use them.
Related: Your Product’s Design Could Be Costing You Customers. Here’s What You’re Doing Wrong (and How to Fix It).
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