I now realize that maybe the ideas that I was thinking about building were too big.

Like, okay, why even bother with CRM? It’s a thing that is too big.

You are targeting small and medium-sized businesses, but think even further. Small and medium-sized businesses and a lot of freelancers and people who just want to use something which can help them handle people-oriented process where they want to track progress.

So, how about a people process manager in simplest form you can use even if you are handling two people? That should be what we are after, right?

We want to build simple things and it also gives us a nice roadmap ahead.

What can be the micro instance of the most popular softwares that businesses pay a lot for?

Like Microsoft Word, it can just be done, like most of the work that is done in it can be done with just notepad. Like Photoshop, a lot of things like most of the things like cropping blah blah blah people do, that can be just done with MS paint.

And see, these two apps, notepad and paint, they are so simplified, like so bare bones, but I bet there are hundreds of web apps online that PRINT money by just offering the features that these notepads and paint app provides and all of that is because they are positioning themselves well, right?

When you build a complicated software, you cannot market yourself to a huge segment of market because you are too high level for them.

Like if I start freelancing tomorrow, I cannot imagine buying a CRM. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I need something that is more simple and for smaller scale.

So what we should be doing is build for micro needs too. And maybe there are more profitable liabilities there.

Why?

Because when we are targeting people like this, they want simple things. Most probably they won’t even use it that much. If there are power users, you can include friction.

Like if you make a relationship management software, like for the first 50 contacts, you can have like easily adding contacts as a feature. And after 50, before if you were able to add like 10 contacts at once, you can add only two at once. After 100, you can only add one at once.

These are the things that we can do. And this also gives us a nice wedge to play. Like when you play at such micro level, you know the key insights. What is the user actually looking for?

And let’s say you have a now a nice user base with the micro tool and some of them are maturing and need a better, bigger tool.

Then you can go from a micro app to a mini app and then an actual size app, then enterprise level app, and then maybe in-house level.

See the word example, micro need, it can be just addressed with notepad. Mini need can also be addressed with notepad with some formatting. Actual one would be like using word. Then enterprise level can be using a knowledge management software that has documented in notion or something like that. And then in-house for Firms like CIA, they need secrecy, et cetera. They have their custom needs, blah, blah, blah.

So the simple concept of storing information can take so many forms over so many levels. So why not start with micro and wherever you find success, we turn it into mini > actual > enterprise > in-house level.

A lot of times I think we are only thinking about the web app to mobile application journey like okay something is very popular on computers maybe we can do it more conveniently on mobile but we can think the other way also.

Things are so convenient on the mobile and if they’re doing well, there definitely exists some user base out there that doesn’t know about the mobile app and can find a use for you on pc if you have a nice web app

So to study mobile apps and then create a web app for certain demographics can also be a strategy

Because whenever we ideate about something, we start from an idea and then when we are thinking okay I want a million dollar exit, our ideas we morph them into something that would be an actual or enterprise level software.

While you would be much better off if you started from the micro scale because the market knowledge you would get from that level of operation, the insights that you would get would be insane.

One thing is extraordinarily clear to me and that is that the more complex the application, the more features it has, the harder it is to position. And the longer the sales cycle would be just because of that reason, because you have to convince that you have some value and you need to explain it to your leads and prospects.

While apps that are of micro and mini scale, they are so simple that the positioning and branding can be so easy that that helps you keep the sales cycle small also. This is how you are supposed to think.

Like, ask a consultant what he does, he won’t be able to answer and you won’t be able to understand what exactly is his job. And on the other hand, ask a watchman what is his job, and it will be very easy to understand.

And tell me, which is the profession that has the quickest sales cycle? You can hire a watchman quickly, but you cannot hire a consultant quickly, right?

You have to think, you have to look for prestige, you have to look for so many intangibles. But for a security guard, just look at, yeah, can he stay awake during his duty? And can he just not be a crook? That’s all.