These "startup advice" articles on Hacker News always come off as cheap marketing. Each one seems to make sense, but are so imprecise and arbitrary that they are absolutely useless in practice. Tomorrow there will be another article that points out that you have to add extra features that your competition doesn't have and that's the way to do it, and upon reading it too will make sense.
And about this particular article, can you be any more banal than by stating "do one thing and do it well"? The only difference is that usually people make comparisons to Swiss army knife and in this case it's that ninja tool.
It reminds me of the Forer Effect, usually used to describe how Horoscopes can sound like they apply to you, but are written in an abstract enough way such that they could possibly apply to anybody.
> can you be any more banal than by stating "do one thing and do it well"?
While this does apply to the article, it isn't even that good of advice for startups. It's not enough to do one thing really well. That one thing also must be needed very much by no matter how small group of people. You can create app that is really good at finding just McDonalds restaurants in your area, for example, but if nobody really needs it it will not matter.
Agreed. This advice is not scalable either - should I be carrying a ruler, a bottle opener, screw drivers all separately because startups only focus on one thing? Logic tells me anybody would prefer a 'wallet ninja' like product instead.
I think the problem is there even if you're focusing on the One Thing. Look at Github. They have issues, wiki, gist, pull requests, search, repo browser, keyboard shortcuts, private repos and so much more. That's still within the One Thing.
And of course, Github built those things over time. But the question that still remains, especially on the early days, with limited resources:
What new feature should we add next to this one thing?
from a list of dozens of features that customers are screaming for... Shall we add a native app? or should we add Facebook integration? Should we add some gamification elements or redo the homepage to increase conversions? and the list goes on.
Sorta. There were plenty of websites for source code hosting before Github, but they all sucked because you couldn't collaborate or at least not easily. Github focusing on easy-to-use collaboration tools (pull requests and issues) is what set them apart.
Is GitHib still a startup? I guess the article tries to emphasize to people "starting" something to focus on one thing and not to solve all the worlds problems in v1.
You're right that you'll (practically) always have more than one feature in a product, so counting features doesn't really make sense. You should approach it from the other end: identify a segment of the market, a narrow set of customers, and aim to build a product that is clearly the best option available for them. Judge every feature through this lens, and don't stray outside the focus until you've won that niche (if ever).
I get what the author is trying to say but thought I'd add a bit on the Ninja Wallet mentioned there.
I have a Pocket Monkey (http://zootilitytools.com) which is similar to Wallet Ninja and have been carrying this around for over a year in my wallet. I personally love this tool and will never leave home without it. Much like as Swiss Army Knife, this thing has been useful so many times for me. Admittedly however my most frequently used part of the tool is the bottle opener. Other aspects of the tool don't get used quite as often. However if I were to carry the rather large tool the author links to, it would not fit in my wallet.
gmu3 mentions the issue with airports. I travel very frequently through several different countries including the US and have never had any issues keeping this in my wallet. I've only been questioned once but they were okay with it and let me keep it. It's not sharp enough.
The Pocket Monkey is an easy conversation starter as well. Every time I whip it out to open someones beer because there are no openers available they are often impressed of how small and strong it is.
Disclaimer: I was given a Pocket Monkey (worth $12) free to review on my own site in 2013.
I tend to agree, but the author picks an odd example. The Wallet Ninja appears to be a product in the vein of the swiss army knife, an IMMENSELY successful product.
I had a Wallet Ninja several months ago and it could be useful every once in awhile. I'd go the airport though and I would be stopped every time, and I'd have to talk to the agent and insist it's TSA compliant. After a handful of times, I decided it was nowhere near worth the hassle.
I don't want to be too snarky, but is this news to anyone? Who is building start-ups that are trying to be everything all at once? Who has that many resources?
It's nothing new, but this mindset can sneak up on you if you are not diligent. It rarely is so simple as A, B & C. As your software is evolving and improving, you could get off track on features that seem reasonable. It's hard to know whether you are breaking new ground or simply veering off course.
My company has a niche software product and we have people contacting us all the time who love it, but find it missing just one feature to get their business. That feature may happen to be extremely difficult to write or have limited use to our core customers. But if this is a large company or a lucrative contract then it can be very difficult to resist. There may be times where, financially, you really need the income. It could even mean the difference between staying in business or not. So, it is not always so cut and dry when you're in the middle of it.
It's not news but sometimes people get lost. It's really easy to get caught up in gold plating or chasing fringe customers. I think it's good to have a reminder every now and again. Focus on what your company is good at and win your target market. Adjacent markets will come if your target focus is executed at a high enough level.
It's probably not news, but doesn't really give any advice on how to focus. I've worked with many folks who think they are focusing on 'one thing', but that 'one thing' happens to be ... "change the world" level focus. "Our target market is women" is just... impractical.
Was working with a client trying to get a narrowed focus of that 'one thing' to latch on to, vs the "this tool will do ABCXYZ for all working people". We got to the point where, when imagining potential users, there were more people who were not a fit than who were a fit, and things picked up after there. Suddenly there was one problem that was being solved for one particular type of person in one industry, and it became easier to focus everything else around that.
I see a problem too when these sort of articles are a little too abstract/simple. I think the solution here is ground articles like this on, you know, real startups that have succeeded on focusing. In that respect there are few sites that try to address this issue.
I think what articles like this me is that the author/company has 'figured it out' through their own experiences and are so excited to share that joy in some way.
Agree. The article is total fluff. Also, Pinterest started out as Tote when it was many things and they found one feature that really caught on. It's good to focus, but let's not pretend like there's some magic recipe.
I think this is simple advice and often incorrect.
For example: JIRA, it's very complicated software. Many of the complicated features I think are essential for it to get into the Enterprise market. Revenues $242 million.
Basecamp: Their mantra is simplicity (although they do not actually do just one thing, they have several features as part of their software). Revenues estimated at over $100 million.
I do no think there is one simple answer to how to build a successful startup. Focusing on being great at one thing might be a good idea for some businesses but it's not only way to do things and it's far from proven as "the" way to build a startup.
In a sense, the "one thing" that JIRA does really well is being bloated (and through fulfilling the check box process).
And I'm only half joking. I mean, have anyone ever successfully been productive at using the thing? To me, it certainly doesn't do well in department of being useful to developer (or manager, for that matters).
Now I want a Wallet Ninja (or the Pocket Monkey mentioned by another commenter) -- though, tbh, I wanted it the second I saw it, before the article talked trash about.
Having read other comments here, I am kind of wondering how one figures out or defines that "one thing" that the business is supposed to focus on and do well. I don't know of any business that survives by doing literally one thing and only one thing well. So you are awesome at your One Thing, but you can't figure out how to take credit cards or secure the premises or keep people from showing up at work drunk or high. Any of those things can destroy a business.
The reason business is hard is because you have to juggle so many things successfully. If that weren't true, we wouldn't have so many articles on how to do this. We would all just be rolling in dough, doing our one thing or whatever.
Actually, it is a little more complicated than this.
First, startups do need to find out what is that "one thing". So many startup end up building more features (use cases) since they are searching for "the thing".
That is ok - but the problem is that many startups are not removing features (use cases) even after their metrics show that this new feature is not "the thing".
I heard arguments like this:
It is wrong to release a user feature and then simply remove it when your testing shows it isn't improving any metrics. Users will feel they are being cheated, even though they aren't spending a single penny for that feature.
My answer to that is: "How much money did you say they paid for this?"
In our times, being good at things is not enough anymore. You have to be a 'specialist' and in some cases, chief specialist, and you can only be one, if you have dedicated yourself to it 'solely'.
Jack of all trades and master of none. will only leave you among the mediocre. It is easy to be good at multiple things, but as I said, almost everyone is good at a lot things. But a Few are the real class.
As a generalist I find myself in high demand, commanding strong rates and being in the position of building a web or mobile product from start to finish as I want.
By defintion, most people are going to be average in the field. A little extra enthusiasm, ambition, discipline and hard work will push you out of the average.
Show me one "real class" professional who only performed in one field.
Then maybe jack of some trades, master of a handful or in the process of mastering a handful? If you take front and back end development as an example, you have many different ways to go about things on both sides. However, in terms of simply building software you can probably limit your focus for either side and deliver effective solutions. After all, the end user usually just cares about accomplishing what they need to, right?
There's too many other 'good enough' options out there. Time is a precious commodity and you'll never get anyone to make investment in your product if it's not so much better than anything else out there.
FYI, I didn't make that contention or set a definition (although you likely were talking with the GGP there.)
For what it is worth, I think you do need to make the product substantially better for people to check it out within a crowded market, but in a similar spirit to one of your other posts, there are multiple ways to distinguish your product (scaling, UI, feature set, etc.)
I worked for two startups and they BOTH wanted to build marketplaces.
One of them had amazing traction with sellers because they said "it's free to sell right now, hop on in!"
They failed because they didn't have customers.
The other one was an advertising platform, but they didn't have enough advertisers to actually PROFIT from selling their advertising. So they sold lots of advertising... only to pay Facebook to show it (because people want their views and they want them fast) and actually lost money.
What if they just focused on one thing? A business focused on referring sellers to marketplaces... a business working to sell someone else's products... they'd both be very successful at one thing instead of failing to provide on both ends
Reading between the lines, but I assume the author would agree on starting simple (feature A only), and only refine or add to that feature when the customer base dictates it. If one customer suggests feature B, another customer suggests features B and C and a third customer suggests features B and D, then perhaps it would be a good idea to starting looking at adding feature B or "pivoting" altogether to feature B.
And B may become more successful than A, but you never would have gotten there without first doing A really well.
No, it's the one thing that they happen to be good at, that is the problem in that case.
Some 'one things' scale to epic proportions, like Google's search engine or Facebook, and become large stand-alone products all to themselves (and dominate their category).
If your product doesn't have that capacity, you're likely to eventually end up as the target of a bigger company that has that. The Windows ecosystem was famous for that, Microsoft continually ate things that were useful and put them into Windows, killing off entire niche product segments.
The iPhone is about 3/4 of Apple's entire business (the iPad shrank significantly this past quarter, and nobody cared much, because of the iPhone's growth). Search + ads is the extremely share of Google's business. And Facebook (11 years old) only makes money from its core social network for now.
Most very successful companies only do one thing really really well. There are a few conglomerates running around, but they're a very small fraction of businesses.
Also, being good primarily at one thing, doesn't mean you can only ever be good at just that thing. The iPod has all but disappeared as a meaningful business for Apple, to the extent that they essentially no longer talk about it. Apple has been good at one thing, with three different unique things: PC, iPod, iPhone.
And about this particular article, can you be any more banal than by stating "do one thing and do it well"? The only difference is that usually people make comparisons to Swiss army knife and in this case it's that ninja tool.