This is a YouTube video titled "How To Start Vertical & Grow Into a Horizontal Beast" containing a talk or presentation recorded on December 26, 2024. The speaker, Adam D'Angelo, discusses business strategy focusing on starting with a vertical market and expanding into a broader horizontal company, using examples like HubSpot and considerations about OpenAI and API providers.
A general fear for people is that we start as this vertical company, then we will forever be painted as this tiny vertical company. We'll never get to expand and do other things. But actually, I think this is untrue. Even if you take like HubSpot as an example. Like they started as Landing page optimization and became a CRM company many years later when it became clear that customers needed CRMs. So I would start with like you should win something and then find the strategic vision from the thing you win to a much larger horizontal company. And I think it's unclear if like OpenAI or any of the API providers will be that horizontal company. It's hard to say, like where value will accrue, but it's probably not the API.
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