November 6, 2025
Manifesto vs Marketing: Cage Match
Staying opinionated as you grow
Be opinionated, not overbuilt — comments clash over “enshittification”
TLDR: A founder champions simple, opinionated products and a manifesto-style homepage. The comments explode over the misuse of “enshittification,” with critics demanding real “we said no” battle stories while others praise focus and culture as the only antidote to bloat and blandness.
A founder says the secret to scaling without selling your soul is staying opinionated: say no, hide complexity, and keep a bold message — even if it’s just a minimalist homepage and a manifesto. But the comments turned it into a full-on definition duel. The loudest chorus? “That’s not what enshittification means!” Users like jdpage and pettertb argue the term is about companies intentionally making products worse to squeeze customers — more “rug pull,” less “oops we added too many features.” Cue the vocabulary police sirens and a few jokes about playing “corporate bingo” with buzzwords.
On the supportive side, randomdrake cheers the courage to keep focus: adding features is easy, defending focus is hard. Meanwhile, mvkel wanted a spicy war story — a moment when the team chose a painful no that saved the company — and felt the post drifted into “look at our clean homepage.” btilly dropped a crowd-pleaser quote from Tony Hsieh about values being what you turn down, framing the whole debate as a fight against entropy: grow big, go bland.
The vibe? A split-screen: half the room wants a case study with scars; the other half is waving a flag for simple, opinionated products. And yes, someone coined “manifesto-as-landing-page” as the new growth hack.
Key Points
- •The author previously scaled a company to over 600 employees and discusses challenges of maintaining product focus while growing.
- •Growth can introduce complexity to satisfy new users and edge cases; successful products hide complexity, say no to features, and cut when needed.
- •Early-stage messaging is typically direct and opinionated; later, broader targeting can dilute distinctiveness.
- •Writizzy’s homepage is intentionally minimalist—a manifesto only—which the author notes is rare for companies with multimillion-dollar annual revenue.
- •The chosen tagline, “A blogging platform that doesn’t waste your time,” reflects an oppositional stance favoring simplicity and frictionless writing over performative social media engagement.