Q: Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have said in order to be successful, an idea has to be 10x better than what already exist. What metrics should you use to measure this?
It’s true in my experience at least.
The nuance of course is that you just have to be 10x at one thing that customers are willing to pay for. Not everything.
As markets evolve, the big brands, the #1 and #2 in the space … tend to ignore things. Niche features that aren’t worth their time. Segments of the market that are too small. If you’re at $1b in ARR, you can’t really attack the needs of a $10m segment. But a start-up can. They can build the 1 killer feature than $10m segment of a $1b+ market needs.
Go do that. You probably can’t beat Salesforce today. But they are at a $20 billion+ run-rate. That means you can build a CRM to attack many $100m+ segments of the market that they just don’t have time to work on.
Measure 10x by if the customers will pay for that one feature you have built the big guys haven’t yet. Get 10 to pay for it. And if you can get 10 … you can get 20 … and 100. And some day, 1000.
More here: The 10x Feature is Real. At Least, for a While. What’s Yours? | SaaStr
