Unused features quietly drain startup runway when surveys stand in for validation
Building features that customers never adopt is one of the costliest ways startups use up their runway, according to an opinion column Entrepreneur published on October 11, 2026. The contributor sets out five principles. Every build decision is treated as a capital allocation decision, ideas are ranked by impact divided by effort, and customer validation is finished before construction begins.
The column describes a consumer app team that shipped features users had asked for in surveys and then saw flat adoption at launch. That is a roadmap steered by whichever stated wish sounded loudest, not by a defined commercial goal. The bill arrives later: build time spent, opportunity cost absorbed, target customers confused, and a finished feature sitting unused, like unsold stock in a warehouse.
Source: Entrepreneur · October 11, 2026