Whenever I meet with new hires at Jane, I talk about where we started, and how we’ve moved into “appropriate adjacencies” - which, I just now realized as I was typing it, is a term that is annoying and flowery and probably doesn’t resonate with people who are still getting their Slack credentials figured out.
What I mean by appropriate adjacencies, though:
We started with our (still) bread and butter service: eCommerce for cannabis retailers
Later, we moved into in-store ordering infrastructure (kiosks), because retailers asked for a modified version of our online environment to service in-store customers
We engaged with brands, as brands realized they had a vested interest in updating their assets in our centralized catalog (because a single change proliferated to every digital menu on which their product is sold)
Brands had a further interest in Jane, as we represented a unique opportunity to bring their wares to the attention of high-intent eyeballs across our retail ecosystem
Third-party listing services grew interested, as they realized that our integrations and content could enrich their offering and represent a big operational win for our mutual partners (e.g. Leafly)
We began to execute programmatic campaigns for our retail and brand partners, because those partners wanted to leverage their transactional data to target new customers (and retarget existing ones)
And on and on with more to come
At the beginning, though - we were a one-trick pony.
🐎 What is a one-trick pony?
It’s a young company that does one thing. Moreover, it’s a company that focuses on very specific features of that one single thing.
Cannabis tech has had lots of them over the last decade. “We do POS only, payments only, SEO only, website builds only, eCommerce only.” Some of them do the one thing incredibly well, and stick around. Some of them do it with a glaring degree of mediocrity, and go out of business.
Eventually, though - if you are the best at that one thing, and you’ve built your company to be nimble in response to your customers’ demands - you can (and should) expand your offering. It’s how businesses grow over time. Amazon was the best at finding and shipping every book on earth; now AWS powers a third of the fkn internet. Apple made the best personal computer; now AirPods alone would be a Fortune 100 business. These are great leaps over many years, of course, but the journey is similar.
🚪 The Narrow Hallway
Focus is good. Doing one thing incredibly well is good. Not overextending your scope and your resources - also good.
Ignoring market feedback, becoming too stubbornly narrow, or overestimating how good you are at your bread and butter business - bad.
Here’s a handy list of indicators that you’re squeezing too far down the narrow hallway:
All of your messaging focuses on one feature
All of your marketing speaks to one audience
Your customers ask you for simple fixes and you deliver irrelevant improvements
Your competitors are drinking your milkshake
If any or all of the above are true, the reaction is NOT to expand your offering; that’s not my point, and that comes much later. The reaction should be to 1) shore up your key offering to become best-in-class and 2) listen - really listen - to what your customers are asking for.
📚 tl;dr
A one-trick pony is a company that focuses on one thing. It’s usually a younger company
One-trick ponies are not bad, so long as they are the best at doing that one trick and they have built the infrastructure to accommodate market feedback
Eventually, it is natural and necessary to expand service offerings according to what your customers need
It is Friday