Focus
Seems to be that when I have done my best work it was always driven by an obsessive focus for solving a core problem or need that I believed to be extremely valuable to the user I had identified. I then pursued that solve for with an absurd level of relentlessness.
As I got older and became more experienced in the first order frameworks and principles of building, I realized that this was one of the most important parts of building anything -- identifying that first core layer (that first concentric circle) to solve for with a fixated obsession and then let the scaling happen naturally outwards from there.
I have aggregated several quotes, comments, and threads together here that I think are helpful in further articulating my point from Peter Theil, Paul Graham, Apple, and Sam Altman.
Thiel: “Almost all of the successful companies in Silicon Valley had some model of starting with small markets and expanding.”
Amazon started with books.
- PayPal started with eBay power-sellers.
- Facebook started with Harvard.
- Airbnb started with renting air mattresses.
- Tesla started with high-end electric sports cars.
“You want to be a one-of-a-kind company where it’s the only one in a small ecosystem… large existing markets typically mean you have tons of competition and it’s very hard to differentiate.”
Monopolize a niche. Expand concentrically from there.
Paul Graham: the secret to growing really fast is starting with a “small, intense fire”
“You’ve got to find people who want what you’re making A LOT. And that's necessarily going to be a small number at first. But that's ok. That’s how these giant things get started… You don’t have to do any better than Apple and Facebook.”
Apple started by selling just 500 Apple I computers. Today Apple is the largest company in the world.
"You have to know who those first users are and how you're going to get them. Then you're going to sit down and just have a party with those first few users and focus entirely on them and making them super super happy."
He gives another example of a startup in a Y Combinator batch with a beta group of just one user: Sam Altman.
This startup was building a new mobile email client and their goal was to just make Sam happy. Sam uses email a lot on the go, knows all of the other email client options, and is super demanding.
So they know that if they build a product that makes Sam happy, odds are it will make lots of other people happy too.
"One of the things we tell startups in these extreme cases where they can make just one user happy is to act like a consultant. Act like Sam has hired you to make an email app just for him. All you have to do is make Sam happy--it can say 'Sam Altman' at the top of the screen. That's ok! Just so long as Sam would feel bummed if you stopped working on it. That's the test."
Ultimately the secret to building a great product that grows really fast is to build something a small group of people love so much that they'd be really disappointed if you stopped working on it. There are lots of important steps to get right after this, but this is the foundation for growth."
