I think when we see the title we assume the market is “everyone who currently uses a spreadsheet”. And if they try to go after that market, they have almost zero chance of success.
But if they focus on a specific set of users and use cases they can be a much more compelling product than excel, and even a “tiny” market, relative to excel’s user base, can be big enough to support a set of competing tools.
The question remains though — what is the specific set of people they are trying to help, and why are they best at helping?
>>The question remains though — what is the specific set of people they are trying to help, and why are they best at helping?
Yeah, this is what I'm trying to understand. I can't really imagine how to do this for any subset of people in spreadsheet land. Excel and Google sheets are great products, there are network effects, the complexity of the product means scale matters.
But if they focus on a specific set of users and use cases they can be a much more compelling product than excel, and even a “tiny” market, relative to excel’s user base, can be big enough to support a set of competing tools.
The question remains though — what is the specific set of people they are trying to help, and why are they best at helping?