In Leaving Features Out, Ian Landsman describes the thought process he used to drop a big feature from HelpSpot 1.0. I think he made the right decision for the right reasons (go look for yourself to see what he dropped and why). Getting the right mix of features is way more art than science.
Sometime over the next week, I’ll be posting a story covering the flip side of this: choosing to delay in order to add something in.
In many decisions, you’ve got the three levers to play with: scope, time and resources. We in micro ISVs have it easy; we generally only have two levers: scope and time. By dropping a feature, you can move product launch time up, which is generally an excellent thing to do. From time to time, moving launch time back and adding something in is worthwhile.
Good analogy with the levers. I haven’t had time to write it up, but I went through a similar thing as you. I did make some decisions a while back which added to the time, but I think it was very worthwhile. Looking forward to your post on it.