Four Critical Choices
A framework from Seth Godin‘s This Is Strategy (2024). The four choices that determine a product’s future — which most founders treat as constraints rather than decisions:
- Choose your customers. Specifically your smallest viable audience: their language, income, problem, temperament, technical ability. Choosing the audience precisely determines what goes into the product and what the future looks like.
- Choose your competition. The competitive space you elect to operate in sets boundaries around everything you do. Competing against Walmart means accepting that they will always lower prices; competing against bespoke boutiques means something entirely different.
- Choose your source of validation. Who you are trying to please — your boss, a specific segment, an external standard. Getting this explicit transforms every product review meeting.
- Choose your distribution. How you reach people determines the kind of product you can build. A video game distributed through mass retailers is a fundamentally different product from one distributed through Steam.
Why these are choices, not constraints
Godin’s core provocation: founders typically inherit these four parameters rather than elect them. ‘You have probably assumed it is a given and you have sacrificed your agency over the four most important things you should be choosing.’ Treating them as decisions — and making the decision explicitly — is the act of strategy.
Interaction between the four
The choices are deeply interdependent. Change distribution and you change the audience you can reach; change the audience and you change what competition looks like; change the validation source and you change what counts as success. ‘I mean, there is only two of you. You have got to pick, today, before you even turn the page, who are you for and who are you not for?‘