The Myth of Generalist Software

Hello builders!

Today, let’s talk about one of the most asked questions to me:

“Should I build a product that does everything, or one which focuses on just one thing?“

And for what it’s worth — there are 100% solid arguments for both sides here.

But I will give you an answer that most of y’all need to hear right now, while building as an indie hacker.

Got it? let’s dive in!

The paradox of functionality

Most of this confusion arises from the fact that you, the hacker, are a one-person army.

You handle sales, development, marketing, support, and 27 other things all by yourself.

So you think this must be true for software too. And why not, it’s a dream scenario anyway.

A perfect SaaS that solves all my problems in a particular domain, how cool is that?

“I am a generalist, so my software must also be!“

This is far from the truth. There are multiple reasons for this, but the simplest one is you don’t know what is perfect to begin with.

You barely understand the target market, your product is not validated, you don’t know what the customers’ burning needs are — but you are ready to grind hours and days just to build something that they might not even want when it’s ready.

And believe me or not, this is how Tweet Hunter evolved. You NOW see a full suite of X tools embedded into 1 software, but when we started out, it was nothing like that.

In the beginning, Tweet Hunter was a simple tool made to write viral tweets. How? by finding inspiration from the existing viral content.

That’s how we validated the product, reached 1k MRR, and evolved.

It was after we gained significant traction that we started to add more features, that the customers wanted, and created the product it is today.

Niching down - and how to think about it

I think we have established why niching down is important because that’s how you find your core set of customers.

I’ll give you 1 more way of framing this idea:

That’s right — and here’s a roadmap:

1 - Find your niche.
2 - Identify the group you’re most keep on helping.
3 - Solve 1 of their problems, 100%.
4 - Expand with time and demand.

That’s how you grow a profitable and sustainable business.

And again, this is very easy for me to write, and you to read but super tricky in practice. You will find so many new opportunities and it will be hard to say no. But for 99% of them, that is the correct answer.

I am actually wondering if I am not falling back with the “one tool that does everything” with revid.ai as it now does: inspiration, video creation, publishing, scheduling, automation ... am I being dumb here? (what do you think?)

So start building your product, find the core demand group, and make a specialist piece of software.

Your product needs to be great at one thing while it can be below average in other areas. But nail that one thing.

What is your opinion on generalist and specialist software? reply to this email and let me know! (I read all my emails) 👇

Tweet of the week

Owning a business is more than just building it. It’s about growing it.

And one of the best ways to grow a business is, and always will be — an email list.

Alex here is an email master, he literally built Morning Brew.

Here is the 2 part series on how to build and scale a newsletter:

That’s it for this week!

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See you next Thursday!

Keep building

Tibo 💻