Craftsmanship vs. market-seeking

I have this theory that there are two types of startups. Those who focus primarily on:

1. Craftsmanship, or
2. Market-seeking

The difference is where the initial insight comes from.

Those who focus primarily on craftsmanship generally have a very opinionated take on a solution or an approach and put it out there into the world, brazenly. The insight comes from within—their own experience, taste and conviction about how something should be done. This conviction is often rooted either in a deep frustration with a problem they’ve personally felt, or a strong belief about how the future should look. They have a vision as to how they think the world should be. Think Linear or Notion. Apple is perhaps the canonical example, with Jobs famously saying things like:

We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.

In contrast, those who focus primarily on market-seeking start without a fixed solution and instead search for a problem worth solving. The insight comes from the market—through conversations, observation, and iteration rather than from a strong internal conviction upfront.

In these cases, market-seekers are relatively agnostic to the exact problem—they’re searching for strong pull wherever it exists. They often pivot until they find a market with a problem painful enough that a solution is pulled out of them and then ripped out of their hands. Think Twitch or Vanta.

Craftsmanship

In these instances, the founders craft a solution and put it out into the world. Their solution is generally a bold statement. The genesis is usually their own experience, thinking "gee, this really sucks, I think a much better approach would be X", then building X. They are not discovering the problem, they’ve already felt it. In a sense, they’ve internalised the market.

When they release the initial version of their product, they’re not necessarily expecting the market to rip the solution out of their hands. Or even that they’ve found a big market at all.

Ninety-nine times out of one hundred they fail. Every once in a while though, they succeed gloriously, and this is when we hear about them.

Market-seeking: working backwards

It’s common knowledge now that to increase one’s chances of success, we should find a market that has strong pull, a burning need, and solve for that.

Hear Christina Cacioppo, founder of Vanta, talk about their path to finding product-market fit:

Rather than going technology, or solutions-first, which they tried with many failures, they ultimately went and talked to the market to find a problem they could solve.

This approach is inarguably common sense! I would agree that this approach is more likely to produce success than the "craftsman" approach.

I’m also not saying that those working backwards from a market aren’t craftspeople. They have to have taste in order to design a solution that serves the market need they’ve found. Vanta is a great solution. It’s hard! Ninety-nine out of one hundred times, founders fail to execute on this as well.

Noble failure

I heard Tim Minchin—writer, actor, comedian, etc.—talking about writing the musical, Matilda, in an interview recently. Matilda has grossed over $100m on Broadway. He said the most gratifying thing about it was that he didn’t think very much, if at all, about commercialisation during that writing. Well aware that writing musicals, TV shows, etc. is indeed a commercial project, on this occasion he wanted to write something he truly loved for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2011 and he put his heart-and-soul into the art of it. The craft of it. He notes it is more gratifying when this is well-received (including commercially) versus crafting a project with the end result in mind.

I think what he’s describing here is the "craftsmanship" approach. Having a distinct view, informed by your own experience and producing that. If what you’ve created so happens to hit a nerve, this is a magical feeling.

Perhaps in order to take this approach you need to accept the notion of noble failure.

The concept of noble failure recurs across history. The idea that though we might fail, if we had honourable intentions and moral courage in pursuing our goal, the failure is still worthy of respect.

Greek tragedies, Marcus Aurelius, stoicism and other philosophies circle around this idea of moral character as key to "success". The tragic hero, per se.

The stories of founders who put their take out there and then hit it out of the park often become legendary. Steve Jobs was perhaps the ultimate example, famous for quotes like "It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them."

Don’t ignore the market

All that said, perhaps all of this is two sides of the same coin.

Take Patrick Collison here talking about the founding of Stripe:

He and his brother are annoyed by something, feel they have a better take and build it, their way, for themselves as much as anyone else. However, they do this alongside several other projects they’re working on. It’s only when they observe enough traction to double down on this project that they do. I’ve also heard Patrick say in an interview (something like) "we thought Stripe might be a little stream but it turned out to be a giant ocean". In other words, they didn’t confirm or seek out the giant ocean before putting Stripe out into the world.

This is a sort of hybrid. Strong craft expressed in an opinionated solution, doubling down when the market speaks.

The companies that I’ve labelled as focused on the craft are started by founders who have felt the problem themselves. They already intuitively understand the problem without going and talking to the market, and also have the ability to design an elegant, innovative solution. I.e. they’ve already completed the "market-seeking" step, in a sense.

On the other hand, customers are not necessarily good at describing or designing solutions but they very well know their own problems. To be successful as an entrepreneur taking the "market-seeking" approach, you have to be good at identifying the problem and also designing an innovative solution that has taste and elegantly solves for that problem in a way the market hasn’t conceived of yet.

Whilst lauded when successful, the "craftsperson" approach has been somewhat vilified in startup circles, particularly as a stated goal by a new founder. Why?

Firstly, it provides rationale for ignoring customers and marketing when this is often exactly what is needed.

Secondly, if you’re in the business of investing and trying to help businesses win, then having businesses find worthy problems as quickly as possible is a sensible approach to push.

As a result, the dominant narrative has become "market-seeking".

Do you need deep experience to solve the problem?

One interesting difference between those two groups is that those I’ve described as "market-seeking" may not have experience of the problem themselves…

A natural follow-on question is whether you need deep experience in the problem yourself to design an elegant solution.

In essays such as Schlep Blindness and How to Get Startup Ideas, Paul Graham suggests you do not: that often outsiders with little knowledge of the market they’re entering, win.

If you can identify a problem, it may in fact be a bonus if you don’t have a lot of experience of the current market and solutions in the market. It stands to reason that the less you know the more chance you have of truly innovating, potentially bringing knowledge from other fields or areas of expertise.

Just looking around at successful companies I don’t think deep domain experience is strictly required, though it can certainly help in some cases.

But you certainly need taste when it comes to designing a solution. Stripe, Slack, Vanta. All of these companies demonstrate a high level of product taste and quality in execution, regardless of how they arrived at the problem.

Do what you love…

One thing you’ll hear people—generally investors—say is "why do you have a passion for this problem (or solution)?" or "what will keep you going in the hard times?"

I think the answer to this comes back to who you are.

Some founders I’ve met thrive on the game. It’s all about the financial results (or the power) that come with success. For those, I don’t think that having a real passion for the problem space (and thus the solution) is necessarily core to their success. For some it’s passion about the art of sales, for others financial engineering (I mean this in a good way: think Liberty Media or even Berkshire Hathaway) and for others it’s building and scaling organisations.

In some instances, the goal is very explicitly to maximise the financial outcome. This reality is often quietly (even loudly!) vilified, but it needn’t be. If that’s the game you’re playing, it makes sense to be honest about it.

In practice, this approach often leads founders toward a more market-seeking approach. Systematically finding problems with strong pull in large markets. But it doesn’t have to. You can pursue the same goal through craftsmanship, building something exceptional and betting the market will reward it.

Others are craftspeople. That’s not to say you can ignore the game but it is to say you get energy from the problem or solution space or from the act of crafting a high quality solution. From the technology, the nuances, the quality. In these instances the passion comes from building something that is in line with an area you’re truly passionate about or from crafting a truly quality solution.

I think, ultimately, the best companies figure out both. I find Apple and Stripe inspiring because of their commitment to craft as well as their marketing and growth prowess. The magic of Steve Jobs, an undoubtedly brilliant marketer, and Jonny Ive and his team, undoubtedly brilliant craftspeople, speaks for itself. Similarly, both Stripe’s commitment to the craft and go-to-market have been executed exceptionally.

Some people want to hand-craft leather shoes and others design the machines making Nikes. It’s not a perfect metaphor but there’s some element of truth in it.

I suspect most founders lean one way or the other. I know I do.