Less Is More: Why Removing Features Is the New Startup Superpower
· Nia
There's a counterintuitive pattern happening in tech right now that every founder should pay attention to: the companies growing fastest aren't adding features — they're removing them.
Whoop just raised $575 million. Oura pulled in over $900 million. Both are valued north of $10 billion. And this week, Google launched its own entry into the space with the $100 Fitbit Air, shipping May 26th.
What do these products have in common? No screen.
Let that sink in. In an industry obsessed with larger displays, higher resolution, and more pixels, the fastest-growing segment removed the one feature everyone assumed was essential.
The "Subtraction Advantage"
Whoop CEO Will Ahmed put it simply: "If it has a screen, then it's a watch. If it's a watch, then you can't wear two watches."
That's not just a tagline. It's a masterclass in product thinking. By removing the screen, these companies didn't create a lesser product — they created a different category. One that could coexist with an Apple Watch rather than compete with it.
Sales of screenless fitness trackers surged 88% between 2024 and 2025. Not because consumers wanted less technology — but because they wanted better-focused technology. Weeks of battery life instead of daily charging. 24/7 health monitoring without interruption. A band that disappears on your wrist instead of demanding attention.
Why This Matters for Every Founder
Most founders I talk to are stuck in addition mode. Every sprint adds features. Every roadmap meeting is about what's next. The product gets wider but rarely deeper.
Here's what the screenless revolution teaches us:
1. Differentiation through constraint creates new markets.
Whoop didn't try to beat Apple Watch at being a watch. They asked: what if we compete by being fundamentally not a watch? That reframing opened a market that simply didn't exist before. When you can't compete on the same axis as an incumbent, remove that axis entirely.
2. Removing friction often means removing features.
The screen was the bottleneck. It demanded charging, added bulk, created notification anxiety, and forced design compromises. Every feature you add introduces friction somewhere else. The brave question isn't "what should we build next?" — it's "what should we kill?"
3. Customers buy outcomes, not specifications.
Nobody wakes up wanting a screen on their wrist. They want to understand their sleep, their recovery, their readiness. The screen was a means to an end — and when companies realized the phone could handle that end just as well, the screen became dead weight.
The Broader Pattern
This isn't just a wearables story. Look across industries and you'll see the same pattern:
- Notion won against feature-bloated project management tools by offering flexible simplicity
- Linear took on Jira not by adding more, but by removing every unnecessary click
- Arc Browser reimagined the browser by removing the traditional tab bar entirely
- Hey email removed inbox organization features that Gmail considers sacred
In each case, the winner didn't have more features — they had fewer, better-chosen features aligned to a specific philosophy.
How to Apply This to Your Product
If you're building something right now, here's a practical exercise:
Step 1: List every feature you have.
Write them all down. Every button, every setting, every option.
Step 2: For each feature, ask: "What does this enable the user to accomplish?"
If you can't articulate a clear outcome in one sentence, that feature is probably noise.
Step 3: Identify your "screen" — the feature everyone assumes is essential but actually creates friction.
This is the hardest step because it requires challenging assumptions baked into your industry. For wearables, it was the screen. For your product, it might be a dashboard nobody uses, an onboarding flow that's "thorough" but causes 40% drop-off, or a settings page with 47 options.
Step 4: Prototype the product without it.
Not forever. Just test the hypothesis. What breaks? What improves? Sometimes removing a feature reveals that it was a crutch masking a deeper design problem.
The Courage to Subtract
Here's the truth nobody talks about: adding features feels productive. It's visible work. You can point to it in a sprint review. Removing features feels like failure — like admitting you were wrong.
But the companies winning right now aren't the ones with the longest feature lists. They're the ones with the clearest point of view. And clarity often comes not from what you include, but from what you have the courage to remove.
Whoop's bet was that health-conscious consumers would pay a premium for less. They were right — to the tune of $10 billion.
The next time your team is debating what to add to your product, try asking a different question: "What would happen if we removed something instead?"
You might be surprised by the answer.