There is an audience narrative that repeats itself in the tech industry. A budding startup emerges with a breakthrough idea, successfully attracts incredible VC funding, and soars to the unicorn. The company then fails to deliver sustainable profits and falls from glory in a few short years (or even months, in some cases). Despite the relative slowdown in VC activity, this story has continued over the past year and usually comes to the same end: 90% of startups fail, 10% of which succumb within the first year.
While the numbers paint a bleak picture, one thing we recognize as innovators is that every challenge contains a unique solution. In many cases, it’s not funding that holds entrepreneurs back, but an over-obsession with rapid growth and flashy technology. This leads to indifference to solving key business challenges, ultimately resulting in a lack of stability and long-term profitability. It is important to change this approach and prioritize providing replicable solutions to relevant issues before investing in tempting technology products.
Let’s say the goal is to introduce an innovative solution to new, niche problems in a way that hasn’t previously existed on the market. In this case, you don’t need to be bold – you need to be bold enough to believe in your company’s vision and have enough knowledge about the space you’re in to hold firm to that level of confidence, even in person from strong headwinds.
Learn how to start your own class to solve niche problems
Identify your unique value proposition
When faced with seemingly insurmountable odds or a potential investment windfall, what’s most important is staying true to your company’s mission.
The most beloved and valuable companies built categories where none existed to offer solutions that others could not even imagine. There’s a reason why Apple has maintained its presence as the most valuable company on Earth: The introduction of the iPhone came at a time when users needed to carry their iPods, cell phones, laptops, and planners individually. For the first time, there was a single device that could be all of these elements.
Contrast that with a product like Threads, which offers a simple change of an existing product and has failed to retain users. The sales pitch of “We offer the same product as what’s already on the market, just a little different” is much weaker than “Here’s a solution that didn’t exist before.” In my career helping brands connect with their communities on their platforms, I’ve seen how this strategy reaps greater rewards than copying existing solutions.
In 2018–2019, I embarked on a journey to challenge the traditional social giants and provide an alternative way for brands to develop brand-centric online communities. At that time, Facebook had many infamous scandals related to the misuse of personal data, so Friendship embarked on a mission to improve and democratize social networks, hoping to create them in a better form that would encourage positive interaction with users while respecting user data privacy.
