I had something completely different in mind for today, but then Cal.com dropped a new feature and I couldn’t resist changing plans.

One of my favourite apps, Cal.com, relaunched this week with an AI-powered scheduling assistant. This time it comes in the form of a voice call agent. In their announcement video, co-founder Peer Richelsen drives his tractor to his neighbour’s farm and gets him to try the product. It’s a charming little moment, and quite refreshing for a tech demo. What struck me even more is that this narrative barely appears anywhere else in their launch. Which feels like a wasted opportunity.

So today’s question is this: Why can’t tractors help you sell your AI product?

Let’s dive in.

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When AI grandeur gets in the way of clear communication

There is only one product newsletter I read, and it’s from Cal.com. I’m not even sure why. Maybe it’s the slightly geeky tone, maybe it’s the fact I use the product every day. In their latest update, they announced the arrival of this AI scheduling tool. Curious to see what they’d done, I clicked straight through.

The landing page loaded with the familiar Cal.com aesthetic in dark mode. Thirty seconds later I was still scratching my head, reading the headline over and over. It wasn’t obvious what the tool actually did.

Do the test yourself: look at their landing page and see if you get it.

So I went back to the email and played the video. There the narrative was completely different.

In the video, Peer shows his neighbour that he can now call a dentist, hairdresser or restaurant, just as he always did, only this time the line never closes because it’s powered by AI. Forget about opening hours. You now have 24/7 access to a scheduling assistant for your favourite local businesses.

I doubt you, dear reader, would have got that from the headline alone.

And that’s my main issue with so many AI startups today. AI is treated like the secret sauce, the thing that makes the product exciting. Yet this feature is not about “supercharging” my scheduling with AI. It is about being able to book appointments by phone at any time, with a friendly automated agent.

I only understood the product once I saw the tractor video. That narrative never made it to the landing page. Which is a shame, because I bet it is the part people remember the most, and it is a great way to reinforce their brand.

I do understand the instinct though. Putting AI front and centre feels innovative, and perhaps it reassures investors that you are playing in the right space. Most founders are nervous about niching too far, or about telling stories that feel too narrow for their ideal customer profile. Yet the best stories often come from a point of view we do not share ourselves but can instantly recognise. All the great books show this. The more personal it gets, the more universal it feels.

I have never worked a farm, but I do know the frustration of remembering I need to book my chiropractor at ten o’clock on a Sunday night and being forced to wait until the lines open the next morning. That is the kind of lens that makes technology relatable.

Two traps startups keep falling into

Cal.com isn’t alone here. I keep noticing two recurring habits across startups: an obsession with the .ai domain and a tendency to stuff “AI-powered” into every tagline. Both are easy traps. Both risk blurring your message until no one really knows what you do.

The .ai grab

Think back to the great domain booms. In the 2000s, .com exploded during the dot-com bubble. Not every business needed to flaunt it, but the extension became shorthand for “I exist online.” Then came .io, which became the darling of developer tools and SaaS before peaking in the 2020s. More recently .app, promoted by Google, signalled you had something mobile-ready.

Now .ai has taken up the mantle. Since 2022 the rush has been enormous, fuelled by the hype around generative AI. Venture capital poured billions into AI startups and grabbing a .ai domain felt like the cheapest way to signal “we belong to this wave.” But like every previous boom, the signal dilutes. What began as a badge of AI modernity quickly becomes background noise. Just as countless .io companies eventually bought .coms when they grew up, we’ll probably see today’s .ai startups retreat to something more neutral once the dust settles. A recent example is Scale AI, which shifted from Scale.ai to Scale.com.

Data on YCombinator companies

So I did a little bit of data crunching in preparation for this article.

analysed about 5,000 of the startups that went through Y Combinator over the past five years, and in 2025 the .ai startups represented more than 32% of all companies that year.

Y Combinator companies are only the visible tip of the iceberg. The rush into AI is undeniable, and the easiest way to spot it is in the scramble for .ai domains.

The ‘AI-powered’ everywhere

The same saturation applies to taglines. My team recently came across Basehub describing itself as an “AI-native headless CMS.” The claim does little to help anyone understand what makes it valuable. After a bit of digging, you realise the real innovation is that you can manage the CMS like Git. That is powerful, but it is hidden behind the AI gloss.

AI is the engine, but nobody buys a car just for the engine.

They buy it because it takes them places, it makes them look good, and they like how it feels to drive.

The real differentiator

Tell more tractor stories

Scheduling isn’t new. Google has its own. Countless apps offer it. What makes Cal.com compelling is its simplicity, its clean interface, and its willingness to play with narrative. That is what has kept me using it over the years. And if I could give a small recommendation, it is that this is also where the future lies: not in shouting about AI, but in showing how it fits into people’s existing habits.

Brand is the multiplier here. How you speak, how you present yourself, what stories you choose to tell. A farmer on his tractor making a call is already a small piece of magic, and that story says more about the product than another “AI-powered” headline ever will.

The risk of the AI commoditisation

The question of whether AI becomes a commodity is not hypothetical. History suggests most technologies do. Cloud computing was once a differentiator, now it is plumbing. Search algorithms were once proprietary, now they are expected. Even mobile apps went from being a novelty to a given. The same pattern could play out here. As models get cheaper to train, open source alternatives improve, and large platforms bake AI into their core products, the value shifts away from “having AI” to what you do with it.

The opposite case is also worth considering. AI could remain a genuine differentiator, at least in certain fields. Training data, compute access and the ability to fine-tune at scale might create enduring moats. If that happens, the winners will be those who not only have the best technology but also manage to tell a story that makes it relevant and desirable to ordinary people.

Either way the conclusion holds. If AI becomes commoditised, the only things that stand out are strong products and strong brands. If it remains a true differentiator, those same foundations help you go further and faster. Which makes the choice almost like Pascal’s wager. Investing in product and brand pays off in every scenario, while chasing the AI label alone leaves you exposed whichever way the future bends.

Thanks for reading.

There is no road.

The road is made by walking.

— Thomas

This is part two of the series. In part one, we looked at how POP MART turned uncertainty into a billion-dollar company in just ten years.

The mechanics of the blind box, the psychology of randomness, and the theatre of unboxing created a cultural phenomenon that, I have to say, my wife and I fell into ourselves. Last week’s piece was as much a personal confession as it was an exploration of why it worked so well on us.

But POP MART isn’t an outlier. Blind-box mechanics appear everywhere once you start looking. Some industries use them to delight (what I call the “light side”). Others exploit the psychology and drift into manipulation (the “dark side”). The real lesson for founders is how to adapt this responsibly: creating products people chase for joy, not out of compulsion.

So this week, let’s write the playbook of the blind box.

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Blind Boxes Beyond Toys

Trading cards are the most obvious cousin and the closest to me personally. Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering built empires on packs with a slim chance of pulling a rare card. The “chase” card can be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, which keeps collectors buying pack after pack. In 2023, Post Malone famously bought one of these cards for $2 million. Just like Labubu, the unboxing content for trading card games have become a huge genre in themselves.

Video games leaned heavily on the same psychology. New skins for your characters, rare items hidden in loot boxes, the random friend or foe you encounter in the weeds. The reveal moment is everywhere in gaming.

Sneakers are another clear example. Nike scaled it with their SNKRS app, which gives you a chance to get one of their daily drops. Another blind box in semi-disguise.

And finally, crypto and NFTs. At the peak of the hype cycle, randomised minting and rarity levels created million-dollar sales overnight. Here again, the mechanics were the same.

The Dark Side 🌑

Not all blind boxes end well.

Loot boxes in gaming became a cautionary tale. While researching this article I came across stories of children in the UK draining their parents’ bank accounts through Nintendo Switch online games. What began as a way to inject excitement turned into accusations of predatory monetisation. Several countries have since introduced restrictions.

Randomness can hook people in the short term but erode trust in the long term if used cynically (and may soon face regulatory scrutiny). The line between delight and exploitation is much thinner than it looks.

The Light Side 🌕

Surprise doesn’t have to be manipulative. Done right, it can become one of the most powerful tools a founder has.

Think of the unexpected delight when a brand drops a limited-edition design. Or when your favourite app finally launches a much-wanted feature. Or the small spark of joy when you stumble on a hidden product Easter egg. These are all delightful blind-box moments.

The litmus test 🌓

So how do you know if your blind-box mechanic sits on the light or the dark side?

The answer has to come from both the customer’s experience and the product owner’s intent.

On the light side, the surprise creates delight without debt. Customers enjoy the reveal, but they feel free to walk away. The mechanic supports curiosity, not compulsion. It adds joy without taking control.

On the dark side, the surprise preys on compulsion. Customers overspend, feel regret, or lose track of how much they’ve invested. Even if they don’t admit it, the design is built to exploit addiction.

A founder’s responsibility is to ask:

• Am I designing for joy, or for dependency?

• If I plotted my users’ long-term wellbeing, would this mechanic leave them happier, or more depleted?

• Would I want my own child, partner, or friend using this product daily?

When in doubt, listen less to how excited a user looks in the moment and more to the emotional toll over time. Addiction feels like joy in the short term, but it’s the designer’s job to know the difference. At least that’s my point of view.

The Founder’s Playbook

Here are a few principles, paired with real-world examples of companies that leaned to the “light side”.

Engineer anticipation. POP MART has new collaborations. Gmail did it with exclusive invites and slow rollouts.

Simplify choice. POP MART collapses multiple options into one. Glossier offered only four products at launch.

Engineer moments of joy. POP MART has the foil-bag reveal. Asana has quirky creature animations when you finish tasks.

Build scarcity. POP MART has chase characters. Hermès has the Birkin bag.

Design collection loops. POP MART has collection sets. Apple Watch has completion streaks.

Create community rituals. POP MART has swap events. Peloton has live classes.

The thrill doesn’t have to be tied to gambling mechanics. Ask yourself: does this mechanic make my customer happier or just more dependent?

The blind-box effect can be engineered to drive desire, but your product still has to deliver.

Closing the Series

Blind boxes prove something counter-intuitive: people crave the thrill of the unknown, provided it’s wrapped in theatre, community and design.

As we’ve seen in this series, POP MART and others built empires on the mystery inside a box. The lesson for founders is not whether to use uncertainty, but how. Done responsibly, it can transform ordinary products into experiences people talk about, share, and remember.

Now I’m curious: what blind-box strategies have you seen or even used yourself? And on which side did you land, 🌕 or 🌑 or 🌓?

Thanks for reading.

There is no road.

The road is made by walking.

— Thomas

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Today I’m writing in a slightly different format than my usual articles. That’s because I’m starting a two-part series on the crazy success of POP MART and the iconic characters of Labubu.

If someone told you, “You can buy this box but I can’t tell you what’s inside,” it would sound absurd. Yet that’s the exact proposition at the heart of POP MART’s success. For anyone who has never heard of them, the concept is simple: you buy a sealed box with a figurine inside, and you only know what you’ve got after opening it.

POP MART is not the first example of the “blind box”. In many ways it’s a toy version of Storage Wars.

This got me so curious that I set aside time to study it and write down the key learnings I found. Why do we pay so much for blind boxes? And how does POP MART turn uncertainty into their main feature, while most businesses try to remove it?

So here it is. Part One.

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POP MART sells uncertainty

POP MART has become a billion-dollar empire on the back of a paradox: we love buying what we don’t know. Customers queue for hours, trade chase figurines, and post their live unboxing reactions to audiences eager to share the thrill.

Why does something that looks like gambling dressed up as toys work so well? As we will see, it’s one of the smartest lessons in choice architecture and consumer psychology I’ve ever seen.

The Origins of the Blind Box

Blind boxes aren’t new. Japan pioneered them in the 1970s with Gashapon machines, capsule toys sold at random through vending machines. Even earlier, baseball cards in the 1950s introduced the “chase” card: a rare insert that made children, and plenty of adults, buy pack after pack.

POP MART entered the scene in Beijing in 2010 as a lifestyle and design retailer. The breakthrough came in 2016 with a figurine called Molly, designed by Hong Kong artist Kenny Wong. The blind-box format took off in China’s millennial and Gen Z culture, blending collectability with fashion sensibilities.

By 2020, POP MART went public in Hong Kong at a valuation of seven billion dollars. Today, they operate hundreds of stores, vending machines across Asia, global collaborations with Disney, Coca-Cola, One Piece and Harry Potter, and are even building theme parks (the first is called POPLAND). The “art toy” category they helped professionalise is projected to hit forty billion dollars by 2030 in Asia alone.

All from selling boxes you can’t see inside.

The Mechanics of POP MART’s Blind Boxes

At first glance, the blind box looks simple: one sealed box, one figurine inside. But the system has been designed with a precision any founder should study. You’re not asked to choose between different figurines, you’re asked to make one decision only: buy the box or walk away. The paradox of choice disappears and the purchase becomes an instinctive yes or no.

Each series is structured around scarcity. Most figurines are common, but one or two are “chase” editions. The odds of getting them are usually one in seventy-two or worse. It’s rare enough to drive repeat buying, but just plausible enough to keep your hopes up. The odds are no secret, they are directly printed on the box. Everyone knows it’s a gamble.

The figurines are released in sets, often of twelve, which means that after buying a few, you feel as if you’ve only just started. The collection design creates a sense of unfinished business, amplified by the ritual of the unboxing itself.

POP MART wraps all this in physical theatre. Their stores are designed as stages to make the purchase part of the ritual. And because they release new series and collaborations constantly, there’s always another loop waiting to be entered.

The Psychology of Randomness

The mechanics are only the stage. The real story happens in the brain. And there are many psychological reasons why we keep going for more Labubus.

Randomised rewards have been studied since B. F. Skinner’s experiments on pigeons in the 1930s. When rewards arrive on a variable schedule, dopamine spikes are higher than when they are predictable. The same principle keeps gamblers glued to slot machines, and in the case of POP MART, it keeps collectors coming back for another blind box.

Once you start a collection, you experience what psychologists call the endowed progress effect. Ownership creates a sense of obligation to finish. It’s as if not completing the set was a kind of loss. Related to this is the Zeigarnik effect: unfinished tasks create tension the brain wants to resolve. Ten Labubu figurines out of twelve feel less like success and more like an itch you can’t quite scratch.

Blind boxes also offer decision relief. We dislike complicated choices, and POP MART elegantly sidesteps that problem by collapsing twelve different products into one purchase decision. You buy the box and accept the surprise. It’s oddly comforting.

The POP MART recipe for getting you hooked on buying is almost complete. Add in fear of missing out and the social signalling of the rare chase figurine, and the cycle is locked in.

But can it last forever?

Novelty has a half-life. If every box feels the same, fatigue sets in. POP MART knows this, which is why they launch new intellectual properties like Dimoo, Skullpanda and Labubu, collaborate with franchises, and constantly redesign the theatre of the purchase.

Marketing as Theatre

POP MART choreographs the entire customer experience. Each box is beautifully illustrated, and inside is a sealed foil bag that doubles the suspense. Every detail reinforces the drama of the reveal.

They also fuel the community. Fans collect, trade, swap, display and share. POP MART leans into this by hosting official swap events and cultivating fan groups. A figurine becomes more than a product; it’s an invitation to a larger community.

And crucially, POP MART tells stories. Their characters have backstories and worlds. Labubu isn’t just a toy with big eyes and strange charm; he belongs to a universe you can step into. Retail becomes stagecraft. Stores and vending machines are designed as immersive sets, making the act of purchase feel closer to performance art than to shopping.

Closing Part 1

POP MART has built one of the world’s fastest-growing consumer businesses by making uncertainty the star of the show.

Next week in Part Two, we’ll explore how blind-box mechanics show up in trading cards, gaming, sneakers and subscription boxes. We’ll also talk about the dark side when surprise becomes exploitation, and how founders can ethically engineer moments of joy in their own products.

Because uncertainty is a powerful tool. The question is: will you use it to delight, or to exploit?

Thanks for reading.

There is no road.

The road is made by walking.

— Thomas

Let’s talk about a mistake I see everywhere: the vision-driven, squishy headline. It sounds big and inspiring, but it’s the easiest thing in your messaging to fix.

Let’s dive in.

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⛳️ The Insight: Capabilities land when outcomes are too blur.

📚 The Research: Distance, time, attribution, and discounting.

🧩 The Framework: Five filters to sharpen your headlines.

🧪 The Test Lab: Rewrite one line and run it through the filters.

⛳️ The insight

Start With Capabilities, Not Outcomes

Founders often default to the biggest promise they can find. If you’re building in sustainability, you say you’ll “save the planet” or “reinvent energy.” If you’re in AI, you claim you’ll “transform finance” or “augment the workforce.” These outcomes are bold, inspiring, and sometimes even true. But they rarely land.

The problem is that outcomes sit at different levels of separation from what you actually enable. The further away they are, the harder it is for anyone to believe you, credit you, or even feel that your solution matters to them. Your customers don’t wake up asking for an outcome that’s abstract, far in the future, and only loosely connected to your offer. They look for capabilities they can use today.

The Superhuman Headline

Early startup founders are not the only ones guilty of being “vision-driven” in their statements. Take Superhuman. I’ve been looking at the company for a while, but I’ve never subscribed. The reason might be that I can’t clearly picture the product or how to use it.

Superhuman is an email client that reduces the time you spend reading and writing emails. Let’s look at their headline over time.

Is the latest iteration of their headline, “Save 4 hours per person every single week”, actually better than “The fastest email experience ever made”? The former speaks to an outcome, while the latter communicates an immediate experience.

Focusing on capabilities doesn’t mean you can’t write original or inspiring copy. What if Superhuman instead said: “Start every single day with 0 unattended emails.” That would get me interested.

📚 The Research

Discounting the Future

There’s a body of psychological and behavioural economics research that explains why outcome-led messaging so often fails.

Construal Level Theory (CLT) shows that psychological distance (whether in time, space, or abstraction) makes ideas harder to grasp and act upon. The further away something feels, the less motivating it becomes. This is why headlines like “fight climate change” or “achieve financial peace of mind” struggle to prompt behaviour. They are too distant, too abstract, and too hard for people to picture.

Behavioural economics adds another layer. Humans heavily discount the value of future rewards in favour of immediate ones. It’s a principle known as temporal discounting. The famous Stanford marshmallow experiment illustrates this perfectly: given the choice between one marshmallow now or two later, most children chose the immediate option. In the same way, a promise that pays off in twenty years has almost no weight in today’s decision.

Think of an AI-driven accounting software. “Automatic expense and invoice reconciliation” motivates because it’s concrete and immediate. “Save three hours a month on accounting” is slightly weaker because the benefit is deferred. And “Achieve accounting freedom” fails altogether: it’s vague, distant, and unmeasurable.

Make it yours

There’s also the issue of attribution. When an outcome has multiple causes, people struggle to credit any single factor. A CFO who improves margins might point to staff changes, new processes, and better forecasting. Your sustainability or AI solution may not even make it into the picture.

And finally, there’s the practical reality of differentiation. Outcomes don’t just fail because they’re distant, delayed, or diffuse. They fail because they make you sound like everyone else. Every sustainability startup wants to “fight climate change.” Every AI platform claims it will “deliver efficiency.” These promises homogenise. Your unique capabilities differentiate.

🧩 The Framework

The thread through all of this is simple: capabilities win where outcomes fail. A capability is close enough for attribution, controllable enough for the user to feel ownership, immediate enough to avoid discounting, concrete enough to visualise. Then make sure only you can say it to bring disctinction in your messaging and you’ll have a great headline.

Here are the filters to stress-test your message:

• Attribution: can people clearly credit this to your solution?

• Control: do they feel it’s within their power to achieve?

• Time: will they experience it soon enough to matter?

• Abstraction: is it concrete enough to picture?

• Differentiation: does it sound like everyone else’s promise?

🧪 The Test Lab

Take your one-liner or website headline and run it through the filters.

• If it fails on attribution, it’s too vague.

• If it fails on control, it feels out of reach.

• If it fails on time, it gets discounted to zero.

• If it fails on abstraction, no one can picture it.

• And if it fails on differentiation, it disappears in the noise of your competitors.

This doesn’t mean outcomes should disappear entirely. They still inspire, frame a larger story, and provide halo effects. They belong in your vision, your investor narrative, and your long-term context. But they should never be your headline.

Customers don’t buy promises floating decades away. They buy the tools and capabilities that change what they can do tomorrow.

Let me know how it goes!

Thanks for reading.

There is no road.

The road is made by walking.

— Thomas

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Last week we learnt a lesson from Sony’s Walkman on prioritising a roadmap. This week, we’re looking at how to really define your audience. Not by age or income, but by what they’re trying to do and why they care.

LEGO figured this out years ago, and it’s a big reason they went from “toys for kids” into one of the world’s most valuable brands.

Let’s dive in.

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⛳️ The Insight: Use cases and emotional drivers.

📚 The Business Case: How LEGO used segmentation by play passion.

🧩 The Framework: Map use case, trigger, alternatives, nudges.

🧪 The Test Lab: Pick one slice, run a 30-day experiment.

⛳️ The Insight

Don’t Stop At Demographics

Defining your customer segment isn’t about picking a demographic group.

If you’re B2B, and your audience is “small businesses in Singapore with a $2k budget per month”, you could be selling software or a cleaning service. If you’re B2C, and your audience is “young professionals in global cities”, you could be selling fashion clothing or career advice.

You get the point: segmentation by demographics tells you very little about your audience and risks of misrepresenting who and how big your market is. This is where psychographics come in. Psychographics give insights into customers’ beliefs, values, lifestyle choices, and motivations. When you understand why someone chooses your product over a competitor’s, you can speak directly to their preferences and priorities.

Your Audience Lives In Their Problems

Defining your audience is about understanding the problem they’re trying to solve, the workflows they go through to solve it, the moment they realise they need help, the alternatives they’re weighing, and what can nudge their choice.

Writing an audience persona should feel like writing a job description. This is the first step in writing great persona or audience cards. It’s not enough though. Once you’ve mapped the problem and the workflow, you need to add texture. This is where use cases and emotional drivers come in.

Read more

Last week, we looked at the danger of staying opportunistic in the long run. Today we’re going to talk about how founders get stuck in the ‘big vision’ of their offer, and what you can use to get out of it.

If you feel like you’re stuck in a never-ending cycle of production and your launch date keeps getting pushed back, this one is for you.

Let’s dive in.

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Here is today’s menu:

⛳️ The Insight: Simpler products win faster adoption
📚 The Business Case: The story of Sony’s Walkman
🧩 The Framework: Core features, biases and psychology to launch on time
🧪 The Test Lab: Your action plan for next week

⛳️ The Insight

Simpler Products Win Faster Adoption

Your offer doesn’t need to be the complete package at launch. It just needs to do one thing well enough.

Launch with a single, memorable feature that clearly defines your product. Everything else can be added to a roadmap later. The reason is simple: we’re quicker to latch onto unique ideas than we are to understand complex propositions.

Just know that forces pulling you towards bloated roadmaps are real and constant. Understanding these traps is the first step to resisting them.

The Inside View Bias

Behavioural economics calls this the inside view bias: overweighting internal excitement over market evidence. That’s why product teams often:

• Ship features they personally find exciting (engineer’s bias).

• Optimise for visual polish over core adoption (designer’s bias).

• Assume their own habits represent the market (founder’s bias).

Clayton Christensen’s Jobs to Be Done theory reminds us: customers don’t “buy” features, they “hire” products to do jobs in their lives. Ignore the job, and you risk building the wrong thing.

Behavioural Psychology in Feature Focus

Several principles explain why “one core feature” works.

On the customer side:

• Cognitive Load Theory: People can only process a limited amount of new information at once. Fewer features means faster comprehension and recall (Sweller, 1988).

• Von Restorff Effect: Distinct items are remembered more than those that blend in. A single standout feature increases memorability (Hedwig von Restorff, 1933).

• Choice Overload: Too many options reduce satisfaction and decision speed (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000).

On the builder side:

• False Consensus Effect: Believing customers share your vision and priorities.

• Action Bias: Equating more features with more progress.

• Ambiguity Aversion: Overcompensating for uncertainty by making the product appeal to everyone.

De-Risking Without Small-Scale Software Tests

In software, you can run small-scale tests before a full rollout. But hardware requires large-scale production, making feature choices riskier. Here are some of the mitigation strategies you can implement:

• Pre-market prototypes in high-context environments: Test early prototypes, focusing on use patterns, not just feedback forms.

• Constrained MVP builds: Build the simplest viable hardware around the core feature; avoid locking in complex, irreversible design decisions until absolutely necessary.

• Narrative testing before production: Validate the story you want the market to believe. If people can’t clearly repeat your product’s one-line benefit back to you, the feature set is still too diffuse.

• High-fidelity mockups: Use industrial design models or video walkthroughs to gauge desire before committing to tooling.

• Anchor on category creation or domination: If your product is breaking new ground, over-communicate and simplify. If you’re entering an existing category, differentiate through the most visible, memorable feature.

📚 The Business Case

The Story of Sony’s Walkman

Sony’s co-founder Masaru Ibuka requested the engineering team to develop a version of the Pressman to listen to his opera recordings while flying. In 1979, Akio Morita, Sony’s other co-founder, led the production of the new Walkman. After a few prototypes, they deliberately excluded the radio.

The radio was the most popular way to listen to music. Technically, it was trivial to add; commercially, it was very sensible to have. So why exclude it? They realised that by making the Walkman all about carrying cassettes, it would be very clear that it was a whole new audio device for the new generation.

This simple yet clever strategy worked wonders. Within just two years, “Walkman” became a catchphrase for all portable cassette players. It was a mental monopoly that Sony built, and still remembered today.

The Story of Google Wave & Slack

If the Walkman is a lesson in restraint, Google Wave is a cautionary tale in doing too much at once. Wave tried to be email, instant messaging, collaborative documents, media sharing and social networking, all rolled into one platform. The result? Nobody knew when to use it, or what it was for.

A year after Google Wave was officially sunsetted, Slack launched with one feature: team chat with searchable history. Today, they are worth more than $26 billion.

🧩 The Framework

1. Identify the Core Feature

   • Identity Test: Would people describe you through this one feature?

   • Behaviour Shift Test: Does it change user behaviour in a visible way?

   • Irrelevance Test: If you remove it, does the product lose all meaning?

2. Guard Against Internal Bias

   • Test feature appeal with target customers before revealing your favourite.

   • Frame questions around jobs-to-be-done and workflows, not features.

3. Structure the Roadmap in Layers

   • Now: Core feature alone.

   • Next: Features that amplify the core’s value.

4. Use Psychology to Prioritise

   • Minimise cognitive load: reduce decisions required to understand the product.

   • Maximise distinctiveness: ensure the core is memorable.

5. Expand once the core feature has:

   • Clear product-market fit signals

   • Repeatable acquisition channels

   • Customer pull for specific additions

🧪 The Action Plan

From what we’ve seen today, take the following actions:

• Write your one-line category sentence: the one thing you want to be remembered for.

• Run the Identity / Behaviour Shift / Irrelevance tests on your roadmap.

• Conduct 10 narrative tests with people in your target audience: ask them to repeat what your product is after hearing your pitch.

• Use it in ads or outreach to measure click-through / sign-up intent.

Try using this framework and let me know how it went!

Thanks for reading.

There is no road.
The road is made by walking.

— Thomas

So, what’s this first issue about?

Today, I’m tackling the most common and most fatal mistake I see founders of every stripe make.

Bad marketing kills more startups than bad tech. So what is marketing? Over this series, we’ll unpack it. Spoiler: it isn’t ads or logos.

Here is today’s menu:

⛳️ The insight: Why opportunism undercuts your future
📚 The research: How aligning around one customer turbocharges ROI
🧩 The framework: A quick guide to narrowing your focus
🧪 The action plan: Your assignment for next week

⛳️ Being Opportunistic vs Being Strategic

We’re wired to keep our options open and say “yes” to anyone who’ll pay. I’ve fallen into that trap too. But here’s the paradox: the fear of missing out on revenue today creates weaker sales tomorrow.

Being strategic on the other hand, demands courage and willingness to start very narrow.

You know you’re losing when:

• Your sales cycles drag on.

• You and your team are stretched too thin.

• You resort to discounts just to close deals.

• You envy a rival who picked a lane and stuck to it.

Pay attention to these signals and take action quickly.

A scatter‑gun offer makes it impossible for anyone to value or trust you. Can a “jack of all trades” outperform a specialist craftsman? Let’s look at a simple example.

Imagine your Swiss watch needs fixing. Which shop do you trust?

• Shop A: Repairs watches and mounted clocks

• Shop B: Repairs watches only

• Shop C: Repairs Swiss-made watches only

The specialist by default earns more trust right away.

When you “build for everyone”, it’s hard to know with certainty which features truly matter, and to whom. Narrow down and be strategic in how you allocate resources:

1. Choose one core offer.

2. Target one customer segment.

3. Log objections and praises.

4. Iterate or pivot fast.

5. Master it, then expand.

I’ll spend the next couple of months on HtU diving into each of these steps.

📚 The Superpower of Aligning Customer Segment and Resources

In “Choosing the Right Customer” (HBR, March 2014), teams that realigned around one segment boosted their ROI by a significant margin. Companies that define an ideal customer, and then shape product, sales and marketing around them, far outperform those chasing everyone.

HubSpot pivot.

HubSpot once chased everyone: from freelancers, SMBs, and Fortune 500s. That vague focus slowed support and diluted messaging. Once they narrowed to mid-market businesses using inbound content, their growth flywheel kicked in.

Stripe humble beginnings.

Let’s look at Stripe. They didn’t launch all the financial services they offer today. They started as a payment API for developers.

When startups scale we tend to forget where they come from. Choosing now doesn’t mean your business won’t grow. And companies that grow the fastest aren’t always the most capable. They’re the clearest. They focus on one audience, one use case, one promise.

You’ll know that you’ve made a winning choice when:

• Shorter sales lead times

• Higher conversion rates

• More referrals from happy clients

• Better output with the same team

• Greater resilience in times of crisis

• Lower stress all around 😉

🧩 A Short Guide to Making Your Choice

Review your latest sales or client conversations and answer these:

1. Feature focus: Which single feature consistently closes deals?

2. Fan-base: Who signs up the fastest and would stick around even at double the price?

3. Operational load: Where does 80% of your and your team’s time go?

4. Profit centres: Which activities deliver the highest ROI on time and capital?

Then weight each by revenue impact, profitability and time sunk. The clear winner tells you where your moat is, and where you should double down. Everything else becomes backlog and roadmap.

🧪 Your Action Plan for Next Week

This week:

1. Choose one (offer + audience) based on the framework above.

2. Test it with at least a large enough pool of prospects.

3. Log results: hits, misses, objections and surprises.

For paid subscribers, you will have access to the Google Doc Framework.

Remember: if your duo flops, you’ll have tried and you’ll then know exactly why. Then you can move on to the next candidate.

Try using this framework and let me know how it went!

Thanks for reading.

There is no road.
The road is made by walking.

— Thomas

If you're a technical founder or operator, you already know how to build. But with the rise of AI and accessible tooling, building is no longer the hard part. The expectations have shifted. Now, the real challenge is how you think, frame, and distribute.

This is where systems thinking and marketing become your edge.

Horse to Unicorn is a growing collection of short, visual, and practical lessons:

• An insight

• A business case

• A framework

• An action plan

Each post is shaped by my own work and conversations with founders and investors. These ideas are designed to be applied immediately and, over time, they’ll connect into a system that can turn a workhorse offer into a unicorn-level business.

The first issue is on its way.
Subscribe now and start building with more clarity and momentum — one step at a time.

Wanderer, there is no road.
The road is made by walking.
— Thomas

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