Should You Niche Down or Stay Adaptable? How Founders Handle Both

Be Adaptable Enough to Find the Direction, Rigid Enough to Execute It

Should you niche down, or stay adaptable?

Everyone seems to have a firm answer. One camp says focus, pick your niche and own it. The other says things move too fast to commit, so stay nimble. I think both are right, and the useful part is the order you do them in.

There's no blueprint, and also there is

When someone asks me how to grow, my honest answer is that there's no blueprint, well, there is and there isn't. Everything in business is a bit of a paradox, and the answer to most of these questions is yes and no, it depends.

Software shows the range well. Instagram is nearly everything: a social network, video, audio, messaging. You could also build one function of it on its own, like messaging, which is what WhatsApp and Telegram did, and within those apps there are narrower functions again. Both extremes work. Neither is the answer by itself.

But "it depends" is only useful if you know what it depends on, so here's how I work it out.

Step one: adapt until you find the direction

It starts with asking the right questions, to the people I work with or to my own life, to find where the most potential is and where I'm actually being drawn.

• What comes naturally?
• What have I done before?
• Where do I have the most leverage?
• Where am I passionate?
• What comes easily?

The answers give you an educated guess at a direction. It's a guess, so this is the stage to stay open. If you commit too early, you can end up building a very efficient version of the wrong thing.

Step two: get rigid once you have one

Once there's a direction, adaptability stops helping. You need a framework, a system and a niche to execute it. A direction you keep half-following isn't one.

This is the part I find hardest, and I'd rather say it. I'm sporadic by default. Left alone, I can be all over the place, and I've learned that I need other people holding me accountable to the steps in the direction I've chosen. Knowing where to go was never the problem. Doing the same unglamorous steps in order is.

Width and depth

I think of two modes. One is reach and speed: going wide, putting yourself out there, moving. The other is depth and grounding: building the foundation that makes more reach possible.

Going wide works until you hit a plateau, and then it stops. At that point you need depth to build a foundation, so you can go wider again. The reverse fails too. Going deep without any push means you're still broke and it's still a hobby.

I saw this with a founder I work with on her early business. The core offer, a premium price point, a community that sticks, and the first 10, 20 or 30 customers having life-changing experiences all require depth. She also needed the momentum, because a business at that stage needs the drive as much as the foundation. It moves in seasons, sometimes a month of depth and then back to pushing, and you learn to feel which one you're in.

How I found a niche, and what it didn't guarantee

In 2016 and 2017 I started a smart glasses fitness business. It won a French innovation prize and flew me to Paris, and I pitched on stage at Viva Technology, the largest tech expo in Europe, with around 60,000 people there and the CEOs of Facebook, Alibaba and Google on the bill.

Looking back, it sat where two things I knew well overlapped. I'd spent years in fitness, and technology has been part of my life since I was a kid.

The niche got me a long way, and it didn't get me what I wanted. I grew the business to a certain point, and it didn't end up with the number of zeros I was after. That was a reality check. A niche can give you a direction and a place to stand, and it can't promise the outcome.

So I went back to personal training, where I was dominating, and I kept feeling a pull to start a coaching and consulting business. On 1 May 2019 I closed the training business with no savings and went all in on it. The niche changed again, and what I was being drawn toward didn't.

The offer changes, and the pull doesn't

Business is the art of pivoting, and it's always going to change form. Large companies, Nokia being one, aren't selling what they were famous for. I don't know what I'll be doing at 45. My guess is that it will sit somewhere in self-development, professional development and expanding how people think, and if one business ends, it'll be rebirthed into another form.

Your offer will navigate, pivot and grow with you, but you're driven by something, and that's the lifeline and the pulse of the business. Niche down on the thing you're pulled toward. Stay adaptable about the form it takes.

How to tell which mode you're in

• You may be too wide if you've hit a plateau, keep adding things, and can't say clearly who the offer is for.
• You may be too deep, with no push, if the foundation is solid and it's still a hobby.
• You may be drifting if you know the direction and keep skipping the steps.

Questions worth asking yourself

• Where am I being drawn, and what's the evidence?
• What comes naturally and easily, and what have I already done that points the same way?
• Have I found a direction, or am I still gathering options?
• Who's holding me accountable to the steps?
• Is my business too wide to build depth, or too deep to build momentum?

Where a second pair of eyes helps

Most founders I talk to can find a direction. Where it falls apart is the rigid part, doing the steps in order when nobody's checking. That's much of what the Founder Accelerator is built around: being close to people who can hold you to what you said you'd do.