Initially a mobile-first video editor, CapCut's rising usage on desktops by social media managers was a crucial market signal. It showed that professional workflows requiring collaboration and approvals are ill-suited for mobile, revealing an underserved B2B segment for web-first platforms.

Startups often fail to displace incumbents because they become successful 'point solutions' and get acquired. The harder path to a much larger outcome is to build the entire integrated stack from the start, but initially serve a simpler, down-market customer segment before moving up.

While competitors tried to build a social network and a recording tool simultaneously, Metal focused exclusively on creating the best video capture tool. By solving a critical user pain point first, they achieved massive scale (tens of millions of users), which they then leveraged to bootstrap a thriving social network on top of existing user behavior.

To fight commoditization against Zoom, Livestorm didn't compete on features. Instead, they hyper-niched their positioning to serve "enterprise marketers in Europe," focusing on specific industries like banking and pharma. This created a clear, defensible go-to-market strategy that avoided direct feature-to-feature comparisons with the market leader.

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.

To grow an established product, introduce new formats (e.g., Instagram Stories, Google AI Mode) as separate but integrated experiences. This allows you to tap into new user behaviors without disrupting the expectations and mental models users have for the core product, avoiding confusion and accelerating adoption.

A "tollbooth" strategy finds a choke point of acute customer need. ClickUp built a tool to find 1-star reviews for competitors, then messaged those users immediately. This intercepted customers at the precise moment their existing option became unworkable, making ClickUp's alternative incredibly compelling and efficient for acquiring their first 100 customers.

Loom was founded on the observation that easy video sharing was ubiquitous in personal life but painfully complex at work. This gap between consumer-grade user experience and clunky enterprise tools highlighted a massive, latent demand. Entrepreneurs can find opportunities by bringing consumer ease-of-use to the workplace.

Weavey's AI tool go-to-market strategy ignored the mass market to focus on the top 1% of advanced creative users. These power users became evangelists, sharing their complex workflows and creating a powerful flywheel for organic adoption.