Focus Until the Market Can Answer

PizzaPortal was built with a broad ambition, but the early work was deliberately narrow. The team focused first on pizza, then on a specific local area, then on adding enough restaurants and users for the service to become credible.

That sequence matters. A marketplace may be global in its ambition, but every transaction remains local: one customer choosing one restaurant in one place.

A broad vision does not require a broad first move

The early temptation is to present the complete future company at once. More categories, more cities, more features, and more customer types can feel like progress because the opportunity appears larger.

In practice, breadth weakens the feedback.

If you target everyone, it becomes difficult to know why anyone said yes or no. If you launch too many features, it becomes difficult to know which one changed behaviour. If you spread a marketplace too thinly, neither side sees enough value in any one location.

Focus creates a denser signal.

Start where repetition is possible

The PizzaPortal story shows a useful order:

1. Begin with the largest and clearest category.
2. Build density in one local area.
3. Use early participation as proof for the next customer.
4. Expand only after the first pattern repeats.

The point is not that every company should start with pizza or one neighbourhood. The point is to choose a segment small enough that progress can become visible.

Product development needs real conditions

The same principle applies to the product. Siła Pędu argues for simple solutions tested with real customers in real environments. Design and complexity can wait when the main question is whether the product performs its basic job.

The cycle is:

• test;
• collect feedback;
• improve;
• test again.

This is not a defence of careless work. It is a way to prevent imagined requirements from replacing observed behaviour.

Find the current priority

As a company grows, the number of plausible projects grows with it. The book recommends repeatedly narrowing the list until the present priority is clear.

Ask:

• Which customer group gives us the clearest learning?
• Which geography or use case can become dense first?
• Which product function must work before the others matter?
• What is the single constraint preventing the next repeatable result?

Global plans and local execution are not opposites. The local test is how the larger plan earns the right to continue.

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Source: adapted and translated from the focus and product-development chapters of the Polish original Siła Pędu (2018).