That's very fair. Indeed, my personal favorite version is Indian, and predates Pythagoras.
I was also trying to name something that most people would at least find familiar... maybe there's a different one, similarly universal, that would be more accurate?
I agree with your counter-point. The finiteness and lock-step are interesting characteristics; I wonder what the set of characteristics are, for when this "rule" is especially applicable.
And then we could ask: Is a startup like that? Are some kinds of businesses like that, but some are not? (e.g. a one-person accounting service vs a "change the world" startup?)
I do agree that often with startups it's whether you find the 1-2 things that REALLY matter, and execute those REALLY well.
As the author of the article, I really like your counter-point here.
Because I do agree -- in all startups most "stuff" is being executed poorly (if at all), with issues everywhere, and yet when you get the right 1-2 things _really_ right, that can overwhelm all those problems.
So, perhaps the charitable view is that this piece is a fun way of getting at the usual ideas of things which derisk a startup -- e.g. talking to customers rather than coding in a hole -- and indeed many of these things will surely be a net-positive.
And yet, the "80% of winning" might indeed be correct for amateur chess and amateur tennis, yet it's not "80%" for startups, and that bit is rhetorical.
And I agree with your push-back on that. Indeed, perhaps when a startup is able to say "ahh, but HERE Disruption CAN work because...", that's where a good strategy can emerge.
Mobile _phones_ did not go to startups. Making money off mobile -- whether apps that were impossible before, or features which advantaged certain companies who were able to be mobile-early or mobile-first, advantaged startups.
A bit. There was enough space that the incumbents failed to notice a niche here or there. And in particular, Google left a relatively big portion of the ad market open for grabs.
But the incumbents succeeded in capturing most of the money involved with mobile. And only became more powerful after it.
Only Apple had the phone, Google's phone is mostly for pushing innovation (not sales) and Meta doesn't have a phone or OS. In the final analysis, most of the value went to these guys not the hundreds/thousands of startups that got started on mobile. Whatever these startups did, these guys copied or bought and drove most of the value post-acquisition (ex. Insta/Meta). Uber is probably the biggest and it only just crossed $150B recently.
Three different people are telling you that the majority of value accrued to the ones listed. Insta and Lyft are both under $10B while the other three got into trillions of dollars post mobile.
I also agree that trying to force "problem" into the discussion isn't useful, and in fact is counter-productive because you're verbally moving further away from what the business is really doing.
So perhaps the whole thing should be qualified as: In the case that a business is solving a problem, which _is_ typically the case in B2B (notice all your examples were B2C), _then_ this is a useful way of breaking down the typical questions you should be posing yourself.
I'm not a PG fanboy but I do respect his thinking, and he really nailed it when he said "make something people want".
That statement is a much more generalized statement about what the basis of a business must be, whether or not it solves a problem, for a business to succeed it must provide something that people want.
In writing this comment I suppose it could even go further and say "make something people want or need". For example insurance and legal compliance are not things people tend to want, but do need.
Maybe; all have large target markets and the last two have unique things.
That said, let's say you're 100% correct. I went back and forth on whether to even include the rubric, because I myself (the author) think it's a little silly to pretend there's a formula.
I found in early feedback of the article, however, that it forced people to really ask themselves good questions, which they might not have done if they read only the rest.
Therefore, I felt like it was useful for that reason -- posing good questions that folks should answer -- but I agree with you that it does have the problem of being a "formula" that cannot really be accurate.
Oh absolutely believe that asking yourself these questions is critical. Even if the answers aren't encouraging or positive. In the very least, they make you think about how you might overcome these challenges if they exist for your business.
Didn't mean to dunk on your post. I actually loved it. Just wanted to call out that founders should probably not follow the letter of the law of the formula but more use it as a guide to evaluate ideas and problems.
You are right about that, and the article doesn't address it.
I think the general idea is still correct. For example, even if the next 200 leads are 50% or even 100% more expensive, that's often still considered a win.
I think you do yourself a disservice here. The article is precisely about the positioning as being more valuable despite being the same. Leaving the user to connect those dots is still a weaker positioning.
It can be hard to select which is strongest. E.g. with DemoTime we could say that getting a video professional to edit your sales meeting into a highlight reel costs 100x as much.
But perhaps even more impactful is the additional demo-to-deal conversion rate that comes from people re-engaging, watching the highlights, and sharing with their boss.
It sounds hard to choose between these two. That's because they're already strong and concrete positioning.
I think some general advice is to pay close attention to the expression on buyers face as you mention. Then ask questions to set up the positioning.
The article doesn't touch on the bigger positioning mistakes (meaningless intangibles). Similar to the above both positionings were already better than average as they're quantified and concise. So actually it's a major improvement on something already quite strong.
I was also trying to name something that most people would at least find familiar... maybe there's a different one, similarly universal, that would be more accurate?