💭 The biggest challenge we're working through right now at Clarify isn't technical—it's strategic: Do we go deeper in our existing focus areas or go broader to rebundle other solutions in the go-to-market stack? This depth vs breadth tension lives in every company right now. Here's how we think about it: 🛡️ Depth gives you defensibility. When you're 10x better at one thing, competitors can't easily replicate that advantage. 💰️ Breadth gives you stickiness. When you solve multiple problems in one place, switching costs go way up. Our approach? We're doing both, but sequentially. Right now, we're going deep on autonomous customer intelligence. That's our wedge—something nobody else has nailed yet. But we're also strategically adding breadth through our engagement pod, rebundling tools that already exist in the market like sequences and account research. The key insight: Don't try to be everything to everyone on day one. Find your wedge. Go deep enough to win. Then expand horizontally from a position of strength. Most companies get this backwards—they go wide first, then wonder why they can't compete with point solutions. What's your wedge? And how are you balancing depth vs. breadth in your market?
This was something I worried about with Definite. A big part of our value prop is "you don't need to buy any other data tools, just Definite", so we needed a fair amount of breadth from the start. I got comfortable with this risk because there was a lot of open source, battle tested components we could use instead of building from scratch. I think building on open source + AI (not vibing, systematic programming using AI) will allow small teams to build broad products like never before.
Defaulting to depth, at least until a point of diminishing returns. Focus is just so win-win! Breadth eventually makes sense, of course. Raises the overall complexity (e.g. into your GTM motions -- all of them, even post-Sale) but in complexity lies the opportunity, after all. There is often also benefit when Champions can tell CFOs that you solve multiple problems (assuming you do Breadth good enough) and could replace point solutions -- that's a wedge of a different sort. From a position of strength. Rarely not the right answer 😉
Love this, but I wonder do sequences and account research actually increase stickiness, or just feature bloat if not adopted? We’re trying to figure out that adoption cliff ourselves.
Smart strategy. Depth builds trust, breadth builds traction. Leading with a sharp wedge makes the expansion stick.
conventional wisdom is depth - 20+years of building software teaches me that depth wins.
Patrick Thompson Such a solid way to look at it. How did you decide that ‘autonomous customer intelligence’ was the right wedge? Did it come from user signals or internal vision?
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3moJust started a trial of Clarify. You made a great first impression. I think it’s a good sign when customers have an appetite to do more with you (bredth). From there I like aggregating customer feedback to drive the priorities, a data driven approach. I think Apollo did the expansion really well, it made it easy for me to buy their platform in my last role, whereas the first time I looked at them they were more niche and I couldn’t justify another tool.