If It Worked It Would Be Big Already

Every time I see a startup pitch that starts with “it's like X but better,” I think about why X isn't already better. There's usually a reason. And the reason is usually more interesting than the startup.

The instinct when you see a bad product in a big market is to build a better version of it. This makes sense on the surface. People are clearly paying for something that doesn't work well. You can make it work well. Easy money. But if the improvement was that straightforward, someone would have done it. The fact that a dozen mediocre products exist in a space and none of them have run away with it is interesting. It's telling you that the problem is the shape of the solution rather than the execution.

I watched this happen with note-taking apps. Every year someone builds a better note-taking app. Better design, better sync, better organization. And every year Notion and Google Docs and Apple Notes continue to dominate despite being imperfect. The note-taking app people keep solving the same problem in the same shape and wondering why they can't break through. The shape is the constraint. The next big thing in how people capture and organize thoughts probably won't look like a note-taking app at all.

When a market is full of mediocre products, the common reading is that the market is ripe for disruption. A better product will win. Sometimes that's true. But more often the mediocrity is a symptom. It's telling you that everyone is building the same type of thing and the type is wrong. The opportunity isn't a better version of what exists. The opportunity is something that doesn't exist yet. Something that solves the underlying problem in a shape nobody has tried.

Duolingo didn't build a better textbook. Language learning had been the same shape for decades and a hundred companies tried to make better versions of that shape. Duolingo made it a game you play on the toilet. Strava didn't build a better running watch. Every fitness company was competing on tracking accuracy and hardware. Strava made running social. If better textbooks or better watches were the answer, someone with more resources would have already won with one.

This is the thing I keep getting wrong. I look at a market, I see bad products, and my brain immediately starts designing a better version of those products. The pull toward iteration is so strong. You can see exactly what's broken, you can see exactly how to fix it, and the path from here to there feels concrete. Building something in a new shape doesn't feel concrete. You can't point at specific features to improve because the features don't exist yet. You're working from a blank canvas and the blank canvas is terrifying compared to the clear fix.

The clearest signal that something new needs to exist is a market full of things that kind of work. If one of them worked well, it would be massive and the market would be locked. If none of them work well despite years of effort and millions of dollars, the problem has been misframed or the solution is not possible yet. Everyone is building hammers and the job requires something that hasn't been invented yet.

The companies that get big aren't the ones that build the best version of what exists. They're the ones that build the first version of what doesn't.