This Tech Founder’s Blind Spot: Building Over-Generalised Products

> People don’t want a general-purpose framework for logging and visualising their progress towards personal goals. They want an app that tells them not to eat the donut, that they lost 2lbs this week, or that they just achieved their personal best running time.

Actually, they don't want an app at all. They want to just be skinnier so that they look more attractive to their significant other or potential mate.

> Likewise, they don’t want an app for general-purpose list-based collaboration. They want an app for smoothly collaborating in precisely the ways that collaboration works best in their organisation, whether that is list-based, project-based, chat-like discussions, whatever.

They don't want that either. They just want their boss to stop bugging them so they can feel autonomous at work and have their work mean something. And they want their work to go as fast as possible so they can go home to their kids and be good parents.

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The biggest lesson that I've learned building products is that people don't want these products at all. But sometimes they find a product that they hope will help them become better at the things they actually do want.

People don't want to buy a camera. They want to be better photographers. So help them become better at what they actually want to do, and you'll find yourself selling more cameras.

That's something I try my hardest to stick to with Draft (http://draftin.com) and it's been working really well. I realize my users don't want yet more writing and collaboration software. But they do want to be better writers. They want more people reading their blog, or they finally want to tell their friends they finally published a book. So I constantly try to find ways for the app to help them get better. And not just the app, but I'll even have webinars, blog, teach my methods at writing, storytelling, getting more readers, etc. and now I have people paying attention to the things I make and sell.

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For these apps of yours, they look like really great places to start from. I think you could do a lot on their homepages and on your blog helping people get better at what they actually want to do with these things, and you'll probably find they are paying more attention.

I'm happy to help brainstorm some more on this if it would help. Hit me up on Twitter (@natekontny) or email (nate.kontny gmail).

Perhaps we should be shooting for generality in the implementation - i.e. a well factored, flexible code base that models the domain well and supports a high level of reuse (and is written in Haskell :-D). Coupled with specificity in the solution - i.e. solves the problem perfectly for a narrow niche of people/organizations.

If you want to support many, or wider niches you re-use parts of your well factored code and produce separate solutions for each smaller sub-niche.

People spend money to solve problems. If the problem you solve is not clearly defined, you cannot define your customers and cannot target your marketing.

The validation you need might be "that's cool!" The validation your company needs is "that solves my problem."

I call this the "Men's Soap Principle". Men's soap is no different than regular soap, but the fact that brands call it Men's, make's it applicable - and therefore men buy it.

Interesting article. I'm sort of here now with something I'm working on, its incredibly general, and thats how I want it.

What I'm going to do however is pitch to the specific groups, the specific uses. I'm going to get out and talk the moms and pops crowd, the artsy crowd, the cyclist crowd and show them how/why they should be using it.

Maybe I've read it wrong, but it doesn't seem like a product/market fit problem to me, it seems like a "I haven't showed these people sufficiently how/why to use it for what matters to them" problem.

Edit: Rereading what I've wrote back I feel even more certain of something: perhaps the problem with creating a product that is too generic is that the gap has to be filled with education, if it isn't obvious on how to use it - like the case might be with a product that is very specific - then you have to fill that with a non-codey layer over the top.

Double edit: I think its funny how I see people write about "coder mindset" as a reason that they've hit a snag but yet still manage to stick to a coder-solution mindset. Maybe try a new layer of packaging, some education. Literally detach from being a programmer. Source: Programmer, marketeer, photoshopper background

To clarify, I modified the title of the post slightly. Now "This Tech Founder's Blind Spot", as I'm writing primarily about MY blind spot, theorising other tech founders might have (or have had) the same. I definitely know some who never struggled with this, and I quite expect to learn and progress beyond this. Great comments, folks and good to hear everyone's experiences, both similar and conflicting.

You can also get too specific - http://www.virtsync.com - I've only made $1000, but it was only a few day's work.

I think this is right on.

I'd like to add a bit of a corollary -- people tend to like products that fit immediate and specific needs because they reduce the effort, mental or otherwise, associated with coming to grips with the product (you may have been going here anyways with your comment about friction).

We use things for a lot of different reasons, ranging from "my boss told me to" to "I saw it on TV" to "it can help me track my running better." All of these reasons get someone over their initial reluctance and get them to try something. Having a specific product (I can track my running) offers a quicker path to get over this reluctance than a more generic pitch (we have a system that tracks anything! If you spend some effort on it, it can even track your running).

Great post Ian! I can certainly relate on the lack of marketing experience but, I can't say that I agree 100% with your verdict that the success of a product rests solely on how specific a problem it solves. Depending on your product's niche, you might find yourself struggling with marketing a product because your potential paying customers are used to general purpose apps that solve most of their pain points, even if not all. Just because those general purpose apps, as you've put it, create such little friction.

For example, I'm working on a startup that caters specifically to runners. That's it. We analyze run data and create nifty little visualizations. The upsell is even cooler forms of analysis that someone like a track coach, amateur, or competitive athlete might use. It solves a very specific problem: "how can I tell that I'm improving as a runner?" and it has very specific answers like "you shaved 25 minutes off your 5K time based on your best runs over the last 90 days" or "in the last 30 days, you've spent 65% of your training at a pace faster than 7:30min/mi (your tempo pace) - you're in danger of overtraining or, worse, getting injured!" Although, I can't even begin to tell you how many people have told us to generalize our app. Include cycling, swimming, hiking. Maybe somehow tie it to nutrition or weight loss. Maybe also vie for the role of becoming the Facebook of fitness. And, of course, the number of times that we chose to turn down the temptation to diversify... I'm all for staying focused. Running is the first and last thing I think of each day, but I think it's also safe to say that being specific can sometimes equate to being esoteric and, that, can sometimes be a long and difficult road to follow. I'm not saying it's not worth it. I'm pretty happy. Although, it doesn't grease the wheels for success indefinitely.

Geoffrey Moore covers this in Crossing the Chasm [1]. He basically suggests that you have to specialize in an industry vertical to get beyond the early adopters and into the masses. Once you cross enough verticals, then you can come back and be a more general product.

I've also heard YAGNI [2] shouted at generalizations. People can spend too much time generalizing problems for broader application that never comes. I don't know the right answer here, as it seems hard to measure how likely it will be that any generalization will be reused later. Perhaps it's ultimately judgment.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing-Disruptive-Ma...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren't_gonna_need_it

You make a good point that I've seen echoed in different ways in different books/articles/talks.

If I can chime in with my take, and I think you had something to this tune in your post, it's important to not only be specific but to be opinionated. You not only have a problem that you've targeted specifically, but you also have the a specific solution.

It reminds me of when I had to write papers in college and the professor would say "Don't just summarize the different sides of the argument, choose one and argue it. I don't care if you're wrong just argue it." I think startups are similar. You pick a side and you come up with a market strategy/argument for it. If you fail, you pivot. But at each step of the way you should have an opinion, an obvious solution that can be conveyed to the user (or investors).

Nice article, some ideas reminded me of a passage I read on Chris Dixon's blog a while ago.

"The successful products took big meals and converted them to snacks. The Internet likes snacks – simple, focused products that capture an atomic behavior and become compounded only by linking in and out to other services. This has become even more so with the shift to mobile."-

His entire post wasn't necessarily about 'specificity', but I really liked his 'snack' analogy. Looking at currently successful products, many are incredibly focused and snack-like.

1. A defined use-case (flavor) they users easily distinguish from other products.

2. Efficient interaction (consumption) that addresses the problem: quickly, simply, and mobile(ly).

Time to invoke Zawinski's Law:

“Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.”

(Of course the contemporary version would tweet.)

Interesting take that this is down to software developer sensibilities. My initial thought was that it was due to shooting for as big a market as possible in the hopes that it would increase chances of success and non tech people would fall just as easily into the 'trap'.