The power of simplicity

In 2007, Jonathan Kaplan and Ariel Braunstein turned the US camcorder
market on its head by creating a camcorder that was simpler
than anything else on the market.
At the time, companies like Sony and Panasonic were trying to win
sales by adding advanced features such as the ability to add Hollywood-
style captions and video effects in the camera.
By comparison, the Flip was crude, with low resolution and missing
“basic” features like optical zoom. One year later the Flip had come
from nowhere to sell a million units—at a time when the entire US
market was just 6 million units.
Kaplan and Braunstein realized that camcorders had become complex
and intimidating. Most people didn’t want to produce feature films at
home—they wanted to pull out a camera, capture a spontaneous event,
and share it on YouTube.
The Flip concentrated on making that as simple as possible, ditching
any features that were not essential. There were no cables that could
get lost or left behind, just a flip-out USB connector that gave the
camera its name. There were only nine buttons, including a big red
record button. There wasn’t even a CD of software for your computer—
the necessary software was stored on the camcorder itself and you
could download it when you first connected the Flip to your Mac or PC.
Simple products, like the Flip, the original VW Beetle, and Twitter,
often have a profound effect on markets. They are easy to use, so they
find a popular audience; they are reliable, so people develop an attachment
to them; and they are adaptable, so they end up being used in
surprising ways.