In 1994, Jeff Bezos started a tiny online bookstore from his garage. For four long years, that's all Amazon was - just books. Not electronics. Not clothing. Not the endless everything-store we know today. Even after it IPO'ed, it was still just selling books.
Many thought he was crazy. "Why limit yourself?" some asked. The internet could sell anything. But Bezos understood something fundamental: to win big, you often have to start small and be exceptional at one thing.
Those four years weren't just about selling books—they were about mastering online retail fundamentals, building robust logistics networks, and earning consumer trust. By the time Amazon expanded beyond books in 1998, they hadn't just built a bookstore—they'd created a blueprint for dominating e-commerce.
Being 10x Better
It's a common refrain that startups need to build a product that's 10x better than existing alternatives to be successful.
That's because new products are risky. People are comfortable with what they know, and most are unwilling to try something new unless it's much, much better.
Online shopping was a rare and unfamiliar concept in 1995. Books proved to be the ideal first product for e-commerce—they shipped well, customers could preview them digitally (through "look inside" features), and the internet could offer an endless selection that no physical bookstore could match.
I always found the "10x better" admonishment hard to swallow as an entrepreneur. 10x better seemed like a huge exaggeration. Maybe even impossible for a tiny company with almost no resources.
What about building a basic MVP? Didn't Reid Hoffman say you were supposed to be embarrassed by the first version of your product? What does it even mean to be 10x better?
The longer I've studied the startup game, the more I appreciate this insight.
Narrow Down
So how is a scrappy team of builders actually make something 10x better? When the alternatives are longstanding well-optimized solutions, usually built by much larger and more established players.
One, you have to narrow down.
In my book The Path to Pivot, I dedicate a chapter to a key tactic that shows up in successful pivots: narrowing down.
The next step of your pivot journey is figuring out what direction to take the company in. Your beautifully, wonderfully dissatised users have ranted to you about many problems. Pick one. Then do a really, really good job of solving it.
The thing is, this advice is good for all founders, not just ones in the minddle of the pivot. There are a few objective reasons why locking down a narrow problem for a narrow set of initial users is good:
- Easier to build. If the scope of problem you’re solving is contained, your solution is less complex and can be built . You don’t need a complex solution because a smaller improvement works just fine — the more straightforward, the better.
- Better results. With a focused approach to problem-solving, you’ve got higher chances of hitting the mark. Designing a tailored solution for a precise need is way easier than thinking up an all-inclusive answer for an expansive problem.
- Greater word of mouth. With fewer, more similar customers, you have the bandwidth to understand and meet their needs. You can build a loyal customer base that’ll more likely to endorse your product and spread the good word—while avoiding dissatisfied users who weren't a good fit.
As a small team, you don't have the luxury of dividing your attention across multiple / non compounding directions. By staying narrow, your marketing, product, and operations efforts have a multiplicative effect.
Compound Quality
But narrowing down isn't enough. To build 10x better, you need to keep sharpening the product for a long time, much longer than you'd like to believe.
That's the thing about building products today—being just good enough isn't good enough anymore.
The landscape has shifted dramatically. We live in a world where software development has been democratized, where no-code tools and AI have lowered the barriers to entry, where almost anyone can cobble together a workflow or experience. There's an app for almost anything already on the App Stores.
This means the bar for what constitutes "exceptional" has never been higher. Think about it: your potential users already have dozens of alternatives at their fingertips. They're tech-savvy, they're discerning, and they're rightfully hesitant to switch from their current solutions.
- Stripe, now a global payments giant, began by solving one specific problem exceptionally well: making it dead simple for developers to integrate payment processing into their applications. For nearly three years (2010-2013), they focused solely on perfecting this core API before launching their second product, Stripe Connect.
- Canva started by mastering simple design tools for bloggers and social media creators. For four years (2013-2017), they focused solely on perfecting their drag-and-drop interface and template library for social graphics before expanding into the comprehensive design platform we know today.
- Even Facebook: they started with a narrow focus, exclusively serving Harvard students before expanding to other colleges and high schools. Even with their explosive growth, it took them 2.5 years (Jan 2004–Sept 2006) before they opened the platform to everyone.
These companies started small and focused. Instead of trying to solve every problem at once, they chose a specific niche and mastered it completely. They spent years building deep expertise in their chosen area before branching out into broader territory.
As a young founder and as someone with ADHD, I was impatient. I wanted to see results right away, and if I didn't I wanted to change course. I also didn't have much experience with the world and struggled build a true sense of conviction in my work.
Now I realize how important time and cycles of iteration are to building something 10x better. In 042, I talked about the research on teams that learned fast from failed attempts were the ones most likely to succeed. Even with a narrow scope, you need to work at it for a very long time to get there.
Takeaways for Founders
Building something 10x better requires patience and focus. It means saying no to distractions—even promising ones—while you master your core product. It means truly understanding not just what your users need, but how they think and work. And it means having the conviction to keep reducing the friction, simplifying the process, and solving the whole problem for your users.
I recently met the CEO of Hitch.com, who founded a long-distance ridesharing platform in 2019.
Most of that time the company was focused solely on the Texas Triangle: Houston, Dallas, Austin. Not the whole country. Not even the whole state. Just three cities, meticulously connecting long-distance riders and drivers. Five years after their founding, they're in only two states: Texas and Florida.
But after half a decade of relentless focus, his flywheel is finally turning, proving that sometimes, the path to extraordinary results requires extraordinary patience and precision. They have done something I thought was impossible—build a financially sustainable long-distance ridesharing platform.
The next time you're tempted to expand your product's scope, remember how Amazon spent four years focused solely on selling books. In a world where "good enough" is never enough, the path to becoming 10x better often begins by thinking 10x smaller.
In the end, the biggest opportunities often emerge from having the discipline to stay focused on solving one problem exceptionally well.
