“There’s often a desire to keep adding features because ‘Oh wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this or that?’ The reality is if a customer is only spending five minutes with your product, they’re only going to interact with a very tiny subset of your feature set. And so, you’re better off usually improving something that 80% of [customers] interact with that is really core than things around the edges that are more functionality.” - Phil Kimmey   Why Listen? We are very excited to be joined by Phil Kimmey, one of the co-founders of Rover (and a frequent member of various 30 under 30 lists), who designed Rover in its infant stages at a Startup Weekend! In this episode, we dive into Rover’s initial design, how the business model was proved, and wrap up with a lengthy discussion on Value-Add Features vs Data-Driven Features. Phil also provides his opinion on what makes new tech and development teams successful and explains why PayPal still sends Rover’s monthly summary statements to his parent’s house.   Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast: Follow Acquired: @AcquiredFM, acquired.fm Let People Know You’re an LP on Twitter! Suggestions and Feedback:acquiredfm@gmail.com   Links from the Show: Conjoined Triangles of Success   Show Bookmarks: [01:20] – Rover’s Start [05:28] – Proving the Idea [08:42] – What was harder: Supply or Demand? [12:12] – Rover’s original construct [15:50] – What mistakes were made in Rover’s setup? [19:20] – Market-place technology & White Labels [23:21] – Deciding on Features and Builds [25:49] – Rover’s Transition from Web to Mobile App [29:29] – Rover’s KPIs [33:00] – Rover’s Technology for Marketing [35:35] – Value-Add vs Data Driven Features and Services [45:15] – Advice for New Technology Teams   People Worth Knowing: Greg Gottesman (Rover, Madrona, Pioneer Square Labs) Aaron Easterly (Rover) Jason Kreitzer (Rover)   Companies Mentioned in Episode: AirBnB AirBnB+ Bandwidth Braintree DogVacay GetAround Kayak.com KissMetrics PayPal Periscope Pubnub Redshift Rover Stripe Twilio Uber   Episode Specific Terms: Acquisition Model Alternative Marketplace Platforms Booking Engine Continuous Integration-Continuous Deployment (Jenkins) Flywheel Front End Metadata Mobile App vs Web App Modular vs Monolithic Code Base Responsive Web Page SMS Costs Startup-Weekends Uber for XYZ Unit Economics Value-Add Services