What Are You #1 In The World At?

[twointwomillion]

Most founders are okay at 1 thing (which is bad) or okay at several things (which is even worse).

Look at it from the perspective of the consumer. Why on Earth would they pick you if there are so many better alternatives? And if, for some reason they did, why would they become repeat customers, let alone, fans?

Forget about being okay at 10 things. Focus on being the best in the world at 1 thing.

That’s actually much more doable than you think if you approach it the right way.

GUARANTEE WINNING BY CHEATING​

DO LESS, BETTER

We already started cheating, simply by throwing 90% of ‘’the homework’’ in the bin. And just picked 10% to work on.

It’s not hard to be the best if you’re the only one doing it.

EXPLOIT GEOGRAPHICAL CONSTRAINTS

Another way to cheat is to realize ‘’the world’’ doesn’t mean the entire planet. It just means your world.

No one travels further than a few miles to get a haircut which means your barber’s competition is geographically constrained. [1]

EXPLOIT UNDERSERVED MARKETS

You can simply pick an area that’s neglected.

I.e. No one was making delicious protein bars before Quest, or bone broth before Kettle & Fire.

Both of them could relatively easily become the best in the world because no one else was serving that respective audience.

REFRAME YOUR WEAKNESS INTO A STRENGTH

Netflix didn’t have any stores, unlike Blockbuster. But that lack of overhead actually allowed them the freedom to do things like ship DVDs. And later, build an online platform. While at Blockbuster, their stores were actually a big part of their business model. Upsells with food, late fees with movies, and so on.

‘’It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”-Upton Sinclair

Something similar holds in business.

‘’It’s difficult to get a CEO/board to change the company’s business model when short-term revenue relies on them not changing it.’’

SOLVE THE PROBLEM BETTER

We can use Professor Christensen’s ‘’jobs to be done’’ here. What is the job a product is being hired to do by the consumer/user?

Ring (the doorbell) is supposed to solve security. But Deep Sentinal realized that footage doesn’t prevent property crimes, it just allows you to have a cute video after the fact. They created a real-time security system, that’s constantly being monitored in order to actually be able to prevent crimes from occurring.

CREATING AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE BY REFRAMING​

I often hear non-founders say things like ‘’Easy for them to say because X.’’ But we all have advantages because we’re all different.

Remember the step from fact aggregation to benefit transformation in Alchemy: Turning Words Into Money Part — 3?

I showed you that, in creative, anything can be turned into a positive if you just frame it the right way.

A car is light: It’s fast, fun, and attracts cute girls.

A car is heavy: It’s a smooth, comfortable drive, that’s safe for the whole family.

Airbedandbreakfast: Come sleep on an airbed with 2 broke designers that can’t pay rent vs. Connect with other designers that’ll show you around the city.

More on that in the Airbnb series: The Dumbest Startup That Ever Worked — What You Can Learn From Airbnb.

It’s all just a matter of perspective. Category 4 of Dutch School: Context Changing.

RAVING FANS​

A very important cheat is to create a product that a tiny audience loves rather than a product that a huge group is ambivalent about. [2] You’ll have an easier time identifying and creating something great in a small group than in a big group. And it’ll scale easier.

So:

‘’Make something that’s WOW!! not eh…’’

Some essays on this topic: Ten, The Third Chair, Create A Product That’s Hard To Live Without, Do You Have Customers Who Deeply Love You?

NOTES​

[1] My barber of 7 years, was one of maybe 3 barbershops to brand themselves as an old school men’s only barbershop. I was looking for a place that did 60s haircuts. Like the old school executive contour but with a skin fade.

They were the only ones in my city to do that. On top of that, they specialized in old school men’s haircuts and offered less than a dozen haircuts. It’s not hard to be the best when you have no competition and only have to do a dozen haircuts vs. hundreds. This is cheating!

[2] Paul Buchheit on going deep vs. broad.

Right. So, one of the ideas is when you’re starting out building something new, especially if you’re going into an established category, like email, literally email was like 30 years old, when we started on it, right?So there is a lot of history and a lot of opinions about how email should be, and people would sometimes angrily tell me, I’m doing it wrong, because we made the reply on top instead of the bottom, weird stuff like that.And so there’s all this history. So it’s pretty much impossible to enter a space like that, and make a thing that appeals to everyone.And if you try to do that, what you end up making is just a mediocre product that nobody really loves.And so my philosophy and what we try to get all the startups to do is figure out a thing that will just have really deep appeal, even if it’s to a tiny fraction of people, if you can make that small fraction of people just obsessively love what you’re doing, it’s easier to then grow that group, because, there’s always people at the margin, where if I just make something slightly better, they’re going to join into that group.So it’s easier to start with that like that deep but narrow appeal, and then broaden it over time than it is to start with just broad meh, and then try to convert people from meh to loving your thing in mass.

The Path To $100B

REFERENCES​

Y Combinator. (2018). The Path to $100B by Paul Buchheit [Video]. Retrieved 27 October 2020, from

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Hope you enjoyed it. If you did, I write daily essays on entrepreneurial science to help you grow your company faster here.

RJ