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Keith Rabois: The Formula for Startup Success Is Simpler Than You Think

By Keith Rabois · Startup Growth · 1 min read

Rabois distills startup success into a framework so simple most founders ignore it.

Key Points

Find a market with broken incumbents
Build a product that is 10x better on one dimension
Distribute it through a channel the incumbents are ignoring

The formula is: broken market, 10x product, ignored channel. That is it.

Broken Market

Rabois looks for markets where the existing players are lazy, slow, or arrogant.

Big companies with bad products and captive customers. That is the target.

If the incumbents are great, go somewhere else.

10x Better

Your product does not need to be better at everything. Just 10x better at one thing.

Stripe was 10x easier to integrate than existing payment processors. That was enough.

Pick the one dimension that matters most to customers and dominate it.

Broken market. 10x product. Ignored channel.

Ignored Channel

Distribute through a channel the incumbents are not using.

Slack grew through bottom-up adoption. No sales team needed.

The incumbents were selling top-down to CIOs. They never saw Slack coming.