One thing!

The biggest winners in business are created through extreme, concentrated bets that look irrational to everyone else.

Hubspot focused entirely on free educational content when competitors were building sales teams. They produced 750+ blog posts before hiring their first salesperson. Their CAC was 61% lower than competitors who split resources “more sensibly” and now they’re a $25B company.

Costco deliberately carries only 4,000 SKUs when Walmart stocks 100,000+. Their counterintuitive bet that severely limiting selection creates higher sales per square foot generates 2-3x more revenue per square foot than competitors. Now they’re a $434B company.

Five Guys serves burgers with zero automation, made-to-order, while fast food optimizes for speed. Their extreme bet on manual preparation and limited menu creates 3x the revenue per store of most competitors and $2.3B/year as a family-owned business.

In each case, they sacrificed conventional “requirements” to double down on a single dimension:

- What if you completely eliminated your sales team in a sales-driven industry?

- What if you carried 1/20th the inventory your competitors consider necessary?

- What if you deliberately made your food service slow in an industry obsessed with speed?

I bet these decisions faced fierce pushback because conventional wisdom labeled them suicidal.

AI makes this approach even more critical. AI now generates “balanced” products that check all the conventional boxes. Anyone can prompt an AI to create a decent app, design, or marketing plan that follows best practices. The baseline is now algorithmic mediocrity.

When AI can execute the “balanced approach” instantly, your edge can’t come from being good at everything. It must come from an extreme bet in one direction that AI can’t replicate. In an AI world, balanced competence is the new mediocrity.

Here’s a little framework for finding your asymmetric startup idea:

1. Identify industry sacred cows. What if you completely eliminated what everyone considers essential? Robinhood removed account minimums. Casper eliminated showrooms. Zapier removed IT departments.

2. Find the hidden cost center. What painful activity do businesses accept as unavoidable? Stripe made payment processing painless when everyone accepted it as inherently difficult. Gusto simplified payroll when competitors made it complex.

3. Invert the status metric. If everyone optimizes for speed, optimize for depth. If everyone chases scale, chase intensity. If everyone builds comprehensive products, build a single-purpose tool.

4. Weaponize a constraint. What limitation seems like a disadvantage? 37signals turned their small team size into a selling point, building products they needed internally rather than chasing market research.

5. Find the emotional gap. What feeling is missing from the standard customer experience? Banking feels confusing, so Monzo made it simple. Enterprise software feels corporate, so Slack made it playful.

6. Go irrationally niche. How can you focus so narrowly your competition thinks you’re crazy? (Spoiler: you can expand from there)

If your idea doesn’t make some people uncomfortable or seem irrational, it’s probably not an asymmetric bet. The best startup ideas sound either obvious or crazy, nothing in between.

Most founders chase many things. Most companies try to be good at everything. Most products aim to check every box.

One thing, baby.

One thing!!

Note: I write posts like this every week, packed with free startup ideas, insights on business building, and strategies for succeeding in the online world. It’s called Greg’s letter.

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