Biggest Smallest
I was catching up with a friend last week who, after 20+ years at a technology company, is leaving soon and kicking around ideas on what’s next. An engineer by trade, he’s interested in building in his current industry and has identified a litany of problems to think about solving, but he doesn’t know where to start.
As a framework, I suggested the biggest problem with the smallest solution. Or, more simply, biggest smallest.
Frequently, first time entrepreneurs want to boil the ocean when introducing a new product to market: incredibly feature-rich products - built in a vacuum. I think that the most successful path is actually the inverse: what is the single biggest pain point that you can address clearly and concisely?
As a startup founder, time is your greatest gift but also your greatest curse. For example, raising money provides you with the time to execute, but it also puts you on an investor clock (market expectations of raising every 9-18 months). Spending six months producing an overbuilt product can lead to disaster if no one wants what you have built. Instead, six months of product iteration, based on end-user demand and feedback, provides a much more solid foundation.
So much of early stage product building is trying to figure out what end-users do or do not like (the earliest stages of product market fit) and allow you to hone your product direction. With an overbuilt product, it can be difficult to discern why someone is using the product: what is the one sentence problem that you are actually solving for? Even worse, if there is no traction because the product was built in the wrong direction or encompasses too much, how can you begin to understand what is or is not working?
Starting a company is hard. When we try to start by doing everything for everyone, we’re only making it harder on ourselves. Solving for the biggest problem with the smallest solution gives us the opportunity to identify user demand and iterate towards product market fit. The ven diagram of the biggest problem and the smallest solution can at least get us pointed in the right direction.