one minute blog: underdo the competition

This is where most positioning frameworks would have given Substack the wrong advice. They would say that Substack absolutely needed to stick to the thing that makes them most unique and was the most core to their identity. Surely it is better to be a one-of-a-kind “paid publishing platform” rather than yet-another newsletter platform! Isn’t it imp... See more

Everyone wants to have a unique idea but the alternative is to just to be ten times better. The market is full of crap. An underrated way to succeed at anything is simply to be better. Anyone can build a "quick and dirty" tool to chat with your PDF. Few people can build incredibly polished products. And those that do need time, effort, and intentio... See more

You and your ragtag team of engineers likely won’t be able to create something that is competitive with any big incumbent product. However, you can build features, seed content, and brand it in a way that is so obnoxiously relevant for a particular group of people that their… Show more