When first starting out, it’s easy to get lost in the jungle without a compass. You’ll hear advice from everyone pushing you in all different directions. Users will want you to build specific features that might not agree with your vision of the product. Ask for recommendations and the suggestions you get will send you in all different directions. Especially since you have limited runway, it’s vital to focus on one product vision and one subset of the market. This means you will have to say no, and people will be disappointed. That’s okay, because nice guys finish last. Succeeding with early traction requires marketing efforts that result in repeated exposure and clearly communicated, compelling differentiation. By trying to please everyone your product and advertising won’t speak loudly enough to your ideal customer. Rather than trying to be all things to all people, make the conscious decision to focus your marketing efforts on one specific kind of customer. Then put everything you’ve got behind solving that pain. Only after you have initial traction – revenue and hopefully profit – does it make sense to start expanding. You can use what you learn in the first phase to broaden your feature set and marketing efforts. Especially at the beginning, if you try to please everyone, you’ll end up pleasing no one.
