A Small Sharp Knife

Your V1 should be a hyper-focused solution for a hyper-focused problem.

Every summer afternoon, under the shade of an orange tree— carefully, meticulously, with a whetstone in his hand— my grandfather, Brahim, would sharpen his small pocket knife. The sole purpose of that small sharp knife was to cut fruit for me and my cousins. And for that extremely focused purpose, my grandfather had the best small sharp knife in the world.

The V1 of any product and startup should be similar to that Small Sharp Knife: an extremely focused solution for an extremely focused—and ideally niche— problem, that eventually lets the founder cut into larger markets.  

Small Sharp Knives are V1s which are easy to explain, easy to understand, and easy to market. Think about the headline on your landing page, the first sentence on your influencer video, and the TLDR of how a friend would describe it.

First-time founders often like to pitch “the tank” version of their product. The tank “will change the world… will revolutionize communication… will disrupt bubble tea.” The tank is too big, it has a million features and capabilities, and is often unfocused, and difficult to understand.

One of the major consequences of this is that you target a wide market with a wide solution and therefore fail to capture a core user base. When this happens, founders think it’s because they haven’t built XYZ feature. This leads to a vicious cycle of building more features, making the product even more complicated to market, and therefore attracting even fewer users. You end up building a tank before even knowing which battle you’re fighting.

Your Small Sharp Knife should prove two things: 1) your product is useful to some group of people and 2) this group is willing to pay for it. Once you prove these two things and get some initial paying users, you can grow the product with them and eventually build your venture-backed tank. But building a tank before you have sharpened the problem you’re tackling is a formula for failure and the story of some of the biggest startup downfalls in Silicon Valley.

Small Sharp Knives often look like utility gadgets or games rather than like venture-backable companies. Think about ”Hot or Not” (the knife) versus META (the tank). Or Loom. In 2016, the Loom team launched Openvid 2.0 on Product Hunt. Their small sharp knife: “One-click desktop, cam, & mic recording tool for Chrome 🎥.” Simple, focused, clear. You know what you’re installing and you know the sole purpose of this tool. After 8 years of sharpening, Loom was acquired for $975M.

Other examples of excellent small sharp knives:

• Captions: created the best software in the world for consumers, content creators, and enterprises to add, edit, and customize captions to videos.

• Honey: save money by getting discount codes at checkout.

• Calendly: book a time on my calendar in a few clicks.

• Stripe: web payments made super-easy for developers.

• Nike SNKRS: find out about the latest sneaker drops by Nike.

• Pho 75: the best pho in the world, if you’re ever in the DMV.

What is your small sharp knife? Reply to this email and let me know. Always happy to help you focus and sharpen your vision.