Uncomfortably narrow

"Uncomfortably narrow."

I love this phrase from David Cummings as he wrote about recent conversations he had with entrepreneurs regarding startup jargon and messaging.

More complexity is a failure to distill messaging down to its essence.

More complexity is a crutch for not taking the time to present what really matters.

More complexity is the easy way to avoid being uncomfortably narrow.

Founders and early-stage startup teams have the curse of knowledge. They believe so much in all the things that their product can do that they wax on eloquently (sometimes not so eloquently) that basic, memorable language never finds its way to the whiteboard.

We had this problem in the early months at Fancred. We would say that Fancred is a social media platform where sports fans can showcase their fandom. Every user gets a Fancred score that increases and decreases over time as you—you’ve already zoned out, haven’t you?

Over time, the language we settled on was: Fancred is a social media app for sports fans.

It felt boring, but it wasn’t. The simple explanation immediately got the attention of sports fans. It was easy to understand and easy for our users to communicate to others. The features didn’t matter… at least in the moment.

Sports fans understood that this was an app made for them.
Non-sports fans understood that this might not be an app for them.

How would someone describe your product to a person over Thanksgiving dinner? Use that language.