I’m Not Elon Musk. I’m a Dev Who Built for Billions — What To Do Instead
You’re Also Not Elon
The email came.
The subject line of the email:
“The show has been cancelled.”
I paused and then smiled.
A few days ago, one of my friends heard that her favourite comedian was going to perform in our city.
She called me on the phone.
She started telling me how she loves this comedian, and she had recently attended one of his live performances in a different city.
It was awesome.
Now she wants to attend this event. She asked me to come with her to the event.
I got excited from her enthusiasm. I decided to go and watch a comedy show.
She asked me to book the tickets. I booked the ticket and grabbed the best available seats.
After a few days, she texts me.
“How far are those seats?”
“Can you change them?”
I hated those texts. She doesn’t even trust my instinct.
She wanted the perfect experience. I knew how this entire thing would play out.
We will go to the event. And she will be pissed the entire time. She will keep making passive complaints, and she will tell me how bad my judgment is compared to her other friends.
All the things she is going to mention, like:
“I had a much better time last time.”
“I was sitting in front.” “I can see him more clearly.”
And I will be sitting beside her, nodding my head and absorbing the tension.
I started hoping for something odd. Not because I didn’t want to go. But because I didn’t want to deal with the disappointment I saw coming.
I wanted something to happen, and the show to get cancelled.
This is why the cancellation email made me happy. I was relieved. No conflict. No letdown. Just freedom.
And weirdly, that’s exactly what it felt like when I launched my first product.
The problem with programmers
In the beginning, I was just like my friend, overly excited.
I had picked a huge market. People who want to buy stuff online.
I thought, since billions of people buy stuff online, even if I could capture a small audience from those billions, my product would make a lot of money.
Just by thinking this, I was getting excited.
Most programmers who start building their product for the first time think like this. They want to go for a big audience.
A big audience is just like a big comic that looks exciting from the outside.
But I never thought about the specifics.
The seats. The experience. The real-life friction.
Launching the product
In the excitement of serving a big audience, I just jumped into writing code for the product.
After wasting a lot of months, I launched the product. And when I launched it, there was complete silence.
No one showed up. Suddenly, excitement became a burden.
This is what happens when you launch a product without thinking about the specifics. Like, how are you going to acquire the customers? Why will people use your product?
When you never focus on these things. The feedback you receive from your audience is random and conflicting.
Large audience feedback is hard to manage, as you won’t get any kind of direction from it.
In those times, you start to think of niching down.
I also thought about it. But niching down probably wasn’t possible because I wanted my product to make big money.
That’s why I wanted to start over. Quitely.
I didn’t want to admit this, but I have picked a market which was too big, too vague and too disconnected.
Just like I didn’t want to admit the seats weren’t right. Or maybe I never thought through the entire night.
I picked the big audience, thinking it would lead to a big outcome. But what I needed was a right fit. Not the big reach.
I needed a niche. Just like at the event, I needed the right seat.
That’s the hard part.
And the earlier you learn it, the fewer cancelled shows you will end up praying for.
The solution
Instead of just focusing on the large group of people.
To build a company, you need to go for a smaller audience.
Take the large group of people and separate them based on a specific property.
This is how you end up with a small audience.
These people will have a similar kind of behaviour. These people might be hanging out at the same place, using the same software or doing the same thing.
Because of these commonalities, you will be able to target those kinds of people easily.
You should focus on doing both marketing and sales based on these commonalities.
Similar kind of people will have similar kinds of problems.
If they’re bloggers, they would want to write the hook for the blog. Also, they would want to publish that blog somewhere.
If they’re developers working for a company. They would want to keep their code maintainable, clean and organised.
You can even niche down more if you want to.
But one thing is guaranteed: if you have to win in this game of building SaaS, you have to select a smaller audience and serve them.
Don’t Be Like Me. Build for Ten, Not Ten Million.