The Next Feature Fallacy

Writing about why products stall, Andrew Chen names "the Next Feature Fallacy: the fallacy that the next feature you add will suddenly make people want to use the entire product." The instinct is well-intentioned — teams chase the feature that will finally make the product click.

But a feature only matters to the people who reach it, and most never get deep enough to see it. A "day 7 feature" is used less than onboarding by definition, since fewer than 4% of visitors make it that far down the curve. Stacking on more features doesn't change who shows up. The next feature was never the thing holding the product back.