After years of building financial products, one pattern stands out: promising ideas surge from zero to hero in weeks, only to vanish within months. Financial apps, where real money and high expectations intersect, are especially prone to this boom-and-bust cycle. The temptation is to cram in features and hope something sticks, but that approach often leads to disaster. Here's a better way.
The Feature-First Fallacy
The Allure of 'Just One More Thing'
When launching a new financial product or migrating paper-based journeys to digital, excitement easily shifts toward adding features. The thinking goes: “If I solve this one extra user problem, they'll love it.” But reality hits when security teams push back, a feature fails to gain traction, or unexpected complexity derails the plan. This is where the concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) becomes critical. As Jason Fried of Getting Real and the Rework podcast emphasizes, an MVP delivers just enough value to keep users engaged without overwhelming them or the team. Yet sticking to that minimal set requires a sharp eye and courage — because the “Columbo Effect” (always one more thing to add) constantly beckons.
Internal Politics vs. User Experience
Many finance apps end up mirroring internal business politics rather than genuine customer needs. Features get added to satisfy competing departments — marketing, compliance, operations — resulting in a cluttered, confusing “feature salad.” The user is left with a product that tries to do everything for everyone but excels at nothing. This dilutes the core value and makes the product easy to abandon.
The Bedrock Principle: Focusing on What Truly Matters
Lessons from Jason Fried's Philosophy
Fried often argues that less is more. A product’s “bedrock” is the fundamental element that provides lasting value. For retail banking, that bedrock is the everyday servicing journey — checking balances, paying bills, reviewing transactions. People open a current account infrequently, but they interact with it daily. Neglecting these routine tasks in favor of flashy new features (like budgeting tools or investment widgets) creates a fragile product. Instead, build a rock-solid foundation around the most frequent, critical user actions.
Identifying Your Product's Bedrock
Ask: What is the one thing users come back for again and again? That is your bedrock. For a savings app, it might be the simplicity of moving money between goals. For a payment app, it's the speed and reliability of sending cash. Strip away everything else and ask whether the core experience would still be valuable. If not, you've built on sand. A strong bedrock ensures users return, recommend the product, and forgive occasional hiccups.
Building with bedrock in mind means resisting feature creep, aligning teams around the core user need, and testing whether each addition strengthens or distracts from the foundation. The result is a product that feels solid, trustworthy, and — most importantly — one that users stick with for the long haul.