

Think small - hornbaker
http://sahillavingia.com/blog/think-small/

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wccrawford
There's some sense in this, but it's all too easy to think small and end up
small. You need to concentrate on making it work well for 1 demographic, as he
says, but keep an eye out that you aren't excluding others or making
meaningless decisions that hurt your product on the global scale.

If you concentrate on "indie bands and their music videos", sure, you'll hit
the sweet spot for them. But you might have decided that limiting uploads to 8
minutes made sense because no music video will be longer than that. It makes
sense from other standpoints, too, because it's easier to store, stream, and
otherwise handle smaller videos.

But what about indie movie producers? Or kids with cats? Or ... Well, the
billions of other video producers out there.

A friend of mine was recently upset that YouTube was limiting him to 15
minutes. He wanted to upload gameplay recordings, and splitting them into 15
minute chunks was a real pain.

Notch's Ludum Dare coding videos would also not have been allowed, and they
were excellent watching. I had never heard of the video host, and might never
hear of them again... Assuming I don't use them. And I might.

So don't blindfold yourself and work on niches. Work on the big picture, but
be sure to make sure your product actually does work for some specific tasks.

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bomatson
I believe his point is more about focus: building for relevant use cases. You
can have the underlying, big conceptual vision you are talking about. That's
what drives the emotion in the product.

But the execution can't directly reflect the vision or few will understand how
it solves their needs.

It's all about the search for a model that is ubiquitous, right? A lot of
small points of value that build into huge influence.

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gord
I think hes right...

I created Lokenote.com as I saw people posting adverts on lampposts, but I
think that was too vague an idea, so maybe my first go at Lokenote was too
generic [ pinning a note to the map ].

I did also build it for a guy who delivers packages all day and wants to share
notes with other drivers on how to get to teh right entrance at a building or
property - so I need to get that guy to use my site and make it useful for his
realworld problem.

Reality has this way of being unpredictable... which makes it interesting,
right?

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tejaswiy
Hey Sahil, I usually love the design sense in all your products but the lack
of contrast on that body text is killing me! I know it looks better that way,
Please make it a little more readable!

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sahillavingia
Hey, sorry about that. Updated!

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sahilgupta0817
Great post by Sahil (not me). In the consumer world, I fundamentally believe
if you can solve a problem for a community, you will more easily reach product
/ market fit. Too often consumer apps go for the home run up front, but in the
best situations, consumer sites have been built for a select audience, and
then have organically grown. Facebook is a classic example - it started out as
a dating site for Harvard, it resonated, then it grew naturally.

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DanielRibeiro
Nice contrast to Zappos' founder Tony Hsieh's[1]:

 _Whatever you’re thinking, think bigger._

But there is less opposition than it might seem. It is important to start
small, but not stagnate on being small.

[1] [http://venturebeat.com/2009/10/24/zappos-ceo-tony-hsieh-
on-d...](http://venturebeat.com/2009/10/24/zappos-ceo-tony-hsieh-on-
delivering-ultimate-happiness/)

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buckwild
Reminds me of a commercial I just saw:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcAp1ogn79g>

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rokhayakebe
Sahil, what is your next move (startup-wise)? I am really curious.

