William of Ockham is attributed with saying that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. East coast early stage VC Ed Sim applied Ockham’s theory to startups by advising founders to focus on the big picture and that less is more. I have been beating this drum for a long time, but to a slightly different tune. The concept of Occam’s Razor, to shave off any complexities, is critical when developing a business strategy. You can’t be everything for everybody. I agree with Ed that founders need to go after the big game but with laser accuracy. Find pain in a market that is willing to pay for a solution and talk to that market to understand what the pain is and how to ameliorate it. Low development costs has led to an explosion in apps but many of them are plain dumb. Here is an idea: the new iphone is said to have auto focus, use ocr to scan business cards automatically add the info into google and outlook contacts and send friend requests on linkedin and facebook. If people (like me) are willing to pay $20 for an outlook plug-in, they’d probably pay for an app that removes a step and adds additional functionality/value. Ask them.
