Why I Build Narrow: Choosing Who a Product Is For

Every founder gets told to pick a niche, and most hear it as a marketing instruction — a smaller box to buy ads in. That undersells what it actually buys you. I build narrow for a plainer, earned reason: when I know exactly who a product is for, every decision downstream gets easier — what to build, what to cut, how to design the screen, how to write the headline. The narrow who becomes a single test I hold every choice against: does this serve that person? Build to pass that test one decision at a time and the product comes out pointed. Widen the who to "everyone" and the test dissolves — the product drifts to generic and ends up good at nothing in particular.

Everyone is no one

The instinct, especially when you badly want the thing to work, is to aim wide — as many people as possible. Bigger market, more potential users; it feels like the safe bet. But a product for everyone can't be specifically good for anyone, because serving every need means serving no one's exact one. A tool that's vaguely useful to many loses, every time, to a tool that's exactly right for a clear someone. Breadth feels like more opportunity and quietly delivers less.

The narrow who is a decision machine

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A clearly-defined user is a decision machine. Every "should I build this, cut that, say it this way?" resolves to one question — does it serve that person? Take away the specific who and none of those questions has an answer, so the product wanders.

This is the practical payoff of narrow: it turns soft, arguable product decisions into a hard test. Faced with a feature, a cut, a layout, a headline, I ask whether it serves the one person the product is for. With a narrow who the answer usually arrives within a sentence or two. With a broad who there's no answer at all — which is why broad products feel muddled. It's rarely that the builder lacked taste; it's that they had no who to point the taste at.

Narrow ≠ small

The fear is that narrow means a tiny market. It doesn't. Narrow means a clearly-defined user with a real problem, not a small opportunity. A product that deeply solves one group's problem routinely beats a broad one that half-solves everyone's, because the focused one is unmistakably "for me" to the people it's for — and it can be found, described and trusted precisely because it's specific. You can also widen later from a strong narrow base. Widening out from something sharp is far easier than trying to sharpen something that started as mush.

How I choose the who

I start from the person whose problem I actually understand — ideally one I've hit myself. Then I define them concretely: not "businesses," but a particular role with a particular recurring pain. For Delivery Sheet that's not "teams" — it's the engineering or product leader who keeps catching vague asks from leadership and has to turn them into a clear, reviewable delivery decision before anyone commits. The more concrete the person, the clearer every downstream call, and the easier they are to reach (I know where they gather) and to speak to (I know the words they'd use).

Narrow enables distribution

There's a second payoff: narrow makes distribution possible at all. When you know precisely who the user is, you know where they gather and what they'd type into a search box — so you can actually go and reach them. "Everyone" is un-targetable by definition; a specific person is findable. The same narrow who that sharpens the product also hands you the map to the people who need it.

What usually goes wrong

• Building for everyone. A broad target with no test for decisions, so the product drifts to generic.
• No clear user. Never defining who it's for concretely, so every decision is a guess.
• Confusing narrow with small. Avoiding focus for fear of a tiny market, and getting mush instead.
• Building for yourself-as-everyone. Assuming your own vague preferences represent a market, without a specific person in mind.

Choose a specific person with a specific problem — ideally one you understand from the inside — and let that narrow who be the test every decision has to pass. A product that's unmistakably for someone beats one that's vaguely for anyone, and it's the only kind a solo builder can realistically find users for. The narrower the who, the clearer the product; and for a small product, clarity is most of what there is to win with.

Part of Building AI Products. See also how I decide whether an AI product idea is worth building and how I think about distribution as a solo builder. The newsletter sends one practical build lesson every two weeks.