Why You Should Avoid Complexity

This is a huge topic that we talk about at member(dev), and something that hits home to Founder/CEO, Ali Jafarian.

Most software businesses and online memberships face complexity. It comes in all forms, from strategy to technical development. As entrepreneurs we constantly think we need “more” and often give into complexity instead of keeping things simple.

Here’s a quick recap of what we discuss in this video –

1) Impact

Complexity has a major impact on all aspects of your business. When you incur complexity you are distributing it to every part of your business. For example, a new [but complex] member feature will impact:

• Marketing – more effort to message/demo the feature
• Sales – more strategy to explain and sell the feature
• Engineering – more time and execution to develop the feature
• Support – additional documentation and human time supporting the feature
• etc.

In summary, complexity always brings “more” to every arm of your membership business.

2) Simplicity = Speed

Avoiding complexity gives you a HUGE advantage in business, which is SPEED. To elaborate on this:

• Speed is a major advantage that small businesses and startups have over big businesses. This is why many big businesses attempt to “run like a startup.”
• Keeping things simple allows you to ship things quickly and experiment.
• Speed allows you to fail fast and learn fast.
• A simpler business is a more sane business to run at the end of the day. If you don’t appreciate this now, you will some day 🙂

3) Greater Discipline

Finally, avoiding complexity allows you to keep a higher level of discipline which will help you grow your business in the long run.

For example, it allows you to practice saying “no” as your default, instead of constantly saying “yes” to everything. This keeps your product offering refined and easier to manage. Along these same lines, never say yes to a sample size of one! Members will always demand things… but the key is staying disciplined to when you accommodate them.