Choosing between breadth or depth first as a product strategy
No, this isn't about binary trees!
As a startup grows and its nascent product starts to gain traction, a pivotal decision often confronts the product and engineering organization: whether to invest deeply in a few capabilities or broadly in many. This choice can significantly impact a product's market success, particularly when navigating competitive markets with established players or pioneering new categories where no previous products exist.
Depth first
Let's begin by defining what it means by depth first in product development. Depth first involves allocating all product investments towards a relatively small set of features or capabilities. This strategy is driven by several key motivations, some of which are outlined below.
Consider a company deciding to invest heavily in a few highly differentiated capabilities that set their product apart from competitors. By doing so, they aim to create a unique selling proposition that makes their product stand out in a crowded market. This approach emphasizes building a superior end-user experience. When compared to a broad approach that spreads resources thinly across many features, a deep focus allows for the development of robust, rich, and well-tested capabilities. Users can enjoy a more polished and reliable product.
Furthermore, concentrating investments on fewer features allows the R&D team to focus on a smaller product surface area. This focus is particularly important when competing against larger incumbents with more resources. By honing in on a select number of features, the R&D team can ensure these capabilities are of the highest quality, thereby enhancing the overall product experience.
Additionally, this focused strategy benefits the go-to-market (GTM) efforts. With fewer features to promote, the marketing and sales teams can direct their energy towards a limited set of use cases and buyer personas. This targeted approach allows for more effective messaging and outreach, as the teams can deeply understand and address the specific needs of their target audience.
Breadth first
Breadth first is the converse of the the previous strategy. Under this approach, product investments cover a wider surface area, yet are shallow. The product exhibits many features but they aren’t full, or complete. This approach offers one unique advantage, relative to the previous one.
Going broad allows you to cover a wider product and use cases surface area. This can make your products more versatile and allow them to address a wide range of needs. You can attract a diverse user base and enhance your product’s market penetration. Notice the italics in can.
Obviously this approach suffers from a lack of focus and spreading your resources too thin - the opposite of what the deeper approach offers. One of the biggest risks with this approach is ending up with a product that is a mile wide and an inch deep. It does lots of things, but none all too well. You do need to be aware of this balance.
Depth or breath, which one to use?
First, these approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive. You can, and I oftentimes, do use both. There are however situations that tilt the balance towards one versus the other.
Broadly speaking, I have found that if you are in a competitive market with existing products then going deep should be the default. In a competitive market, broader products might face stiff competition from specialized products that outperform them in specific areas. Therefore, if you want to differentiate your product in a competitive market, you should identify gaps in the market where existing products fall short and focus deeply on these gaps.
The converse is true if you are creating a new category, or in a market with very few competitors. If you find yourself in this situation, broader is better. The reasons why this approach is preferred in a new market is due to a lack of anchor. The absence of any incumbents can make it challenging for users and customers to articulate what they need. They might not even know what features or capabilities they need from your product. Therefore, going broad allows you to get a signal on what features resonate the most with customers. When you do get this signal, you then should switch to a deep mode of investments in these limited set of features.
My favorite example of a depth first approach is Snowflake, especially during the early days when it took on Teradata. Snowflake didn’t tout speed, or SQL completeness or the richness of its data warehouse capabilities relative to Teradata. Instead, it focused on one core set of differentiated capabilities: cloud native data warehouse and decoupling compute from storage. These capabilities were also the core message that Snowflake used, especially against the incumbent: Teradata. I covered how this strategy can be very compelling to flank incumbents in an earlier post.
A good example of a hybrid approach is the iPhone. Had Apple asked customers what features they cared about in a phone, the answer might have been “a better keyboard”. Instead, the first iPhone blended a not-so-good phone with an equally not-so-good media player. In terms of phone features, it lacked support for 3G and couldn’t perform basic editing operations like copy+paste. It offered a multi-touch screen and iPod like functionality, albeit with limited storage (max 8GB). The first iPhone also supported apps, although those were limited to one developer: Apple.
A few iterations later and one can see where the signal was loudest. Apple invested a whole lot more in its media capabilities. More storage, 3rd party developer support with the launch of the App Store in 2008 and bigger and better screens and cameras. The “phone” investments were, and still are, very limited.