11 megapixels doesn't convert

A founder showed me a product that consolidated Screener, Trendlyne and three other tools into one place. Cleaner. Faster. Real need. I told him nobody would switch.

If you have a 10 megapixel camera and I offer you 11, you don’t buy a new camera. Every switch has a cost. Money, habit, the psychological cost of learning something. 30 percent better doesn’t clear it. 50 percent doesn’t either. People are still on MetaMask. They haven’t moved to Rabby or Phantom or Zerion. They just don’t.

Kunal Shah calls this delta 4. Your product has to be so much better than the current alternative that the switching cost disappears. Not 11 megapixels. A different kind of camera.

The trap is that incremental products feel safe to build because the market is proven. That’s exactly why they’re dangerous. A proven market with a slightly better product is a dev shop with extra steps.

The same applies to the pitch. A founder was building a deposit widget for crypto apps and his pitch was “someday when enough apps integrate this, your users get a unified account”. If Privy had told me that on the day I integrated them, I’d have said I don’t care. Every network effect pitch is a multiplayer pitch. Nobody shows up for the multiplayer. Find the single player benefit. What does one app get on day one, alone.

If you can’t find a delta 4 against the current alternative, don’t improve the product. Change the customer or change the problem. The engineering is the same. The market is different.

the call where i said it best

A chemistry tutor for JEE students. The alternative was watching YouTube. Interactive learning versus a video? That’s delta 4. But if a college releases its own AI copilot, then beating that significantly needs a different product. So right now the product can be a bit shitty. Focus entirely on distribution while the delta is still wide.

do this this week

Write down what your customer uses today. Then write what yours does that theirs can’t. If the second line is an adjective, start over.

the line to remember

if you have a 10 megapixel camera and i give you 11 megapixel, you won’t really convert.