Smaller companies are better at shipping simpler products.

E.g. APIs that require fewer clickops to sign up for and use.

People often assume that this is because PMs at big companies lose the skill for simplicity.

But I think that's wrong.

It's a thing that's very easy at a small company when there's little downside.

It's extremely hard to do at a large established company where there's lots of downside.

It's not that the people necessarily forget how to do it, it's that the situation makes it significantly harder.

The PMs at smaller companies are simply playing on easy in that dimension.