A company with modest growth experimented with niche content for a small user segment, revealing a massive, underserved market. This led to a second, separate app that quickly surpassed the original product's revenue and drove hyper-growth, challenging the "focus on one thing" dogma.
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Cues' initial product was a specialized AI design agent. However, they observed that users were more frequently uploading files to use it as a knowledge base. Recognizing this emergent behavior, they pivoted to a more horizontal product, which was key to their rapid growth and product-market fit.
Founders can waste time trying to force an initial idea. The key is to remain open-minded and identify where the market is surprisingly easy to sell into. Mercor found hypergrowth by pivoting from general hiring to serving the intense, specific needs of AI labs.
Businesses with passionate but niche audiences, like the UFC or F1, can break into the mainstream by producing "on-ramp" content. A human-interest show (like F1's "Drive to Survive") provides an accessible entry point for new fans, demystifying the niche and driving massive growth by solving the discovery problem.
Initial data suggested the market for design tools was too small to build a large business. Figma's founders bet on the trend that design was becoming a key business differentiator, which would force the market to expand. They focused on building for the trend, not the existing TAM.
Intentionally scaling back your primary business and revenue targets creates the space necessary for creative exploration. This can lead to discovering more scalable and profitable opportunities that ultimately generate far greater success than the original, high-effort path.
The key to effective portfolio entrepreneurship isn't random diversification. It's about serving the same customer segment across multiple products. This creates a cohesive ecosystem where each new offering benefits from compounding knowledge and trust, making many things feel like one thing.
Canva's success wasn't from targeting competitors but from identifying a real market gap through their first niche product (a yearbook tool). When users asked to use the tool for newsletters, it validated a larger, unsolved pain point that Canva then focused on exclusively.
The dominant VC narrative demands founders focus on a single venture. However, successful entrepreneurs demonstrate that running multiple projects—a portfolio approach mirrored by VCs themselves—is a viable path, contrary to the "focus on one thing" dogma.
The decision to launch a new app, rather than add a feature, was driven by user research revealing a different core "job to be done." One app was for getting kids to sleep; the new one was for passing on faith. Understanding this motivational difference was key to unlocking growth with a separate product.
When an experiment succeeds (e.g., positive framing after a loss), don't just iterate. Exploit the core psychological insight by applying it across adjacent product areas, turning one team's discovery into a company-wide growth strategy.
