In Gardening Platforms, I laid out how to build a horizontal platform from scratch.

The basic recipe is to find a northstar and then steadily accrete thin layers of slightly-generalized useful functionality.

But this is only if the vision is loosely held, and you're just trying to do something useful.

If you're trying to change the world with a vision in a seed stage startup, you need to take a big swing at a specific vision.

If you build broad, you'll never be able to build anything specific enough to reach very high.

That's fine in many cases where you just want anything viable that produces value, but if you have a specific thing you're trying to accomplish, you have to be specific.

In those cases you want to rough in a thin slice to lift up to the value early.

In a big company you have the patience and time to build up broad.

But if you have a specific thing you're building, you need to take your shot, and do the best shot at it.