Thinking (Too) Big: Targeting 1 Billion Users

Today I read a great article from 404 Media that discussed how one startup founder wants to use AI to create music. The entire article is great but I was struck by this one sentence from startup founder (emphasis mine):

“We didn’t just want to build a company that makes the current crop of creators 10 percent faster or makes it 10 percent easier to make music. If you want to impact the way a billion people experience music you have to build something for a billion people.”

It’s quite a statement: the idea of building an application for 1 billion people seems to be something this founder and CEO has thought about. In this case, he’s thinking about 1 billion users for an AI app that creates music.

I think this is a terrible approach to product development.

I’m not going to discuss the value (or lack thereof) of using technology to automatically create music, other than saying that this is definitely something that could be done. I’m more interested in the idea of building for a large number of users from essentially the founding of a company. One billion is a big number, and humans are naturally inept at reasoning about big numbers.

First, let’s look at some comparisons: the population of China is around 1.4 billion people. The population of Europe and the USA combined is around 1 billion people. These numbers include babies, infants, people in comas, people without regular access to computers, and so on, so it’s not likely that every person in these regions could use an AI product. If we include only people who could use this kind of product, we’re looking at a user base larger than the Western world, roughly speaking.

That’s a lot of people. What’s your CLAs and uptime strategy for that? How do you support that many people even being on your website?

This leads into the next problem: what’s your business model? Running a business means having costs, so you need to generate revenue to offset this and either turn a profit or exist long enough to exit the market. What’s your plan for this?

Targeting a billion users means your options are limited. The first thing you could try is to charge for your product, but that will be difficult if not impossible. You’ll necessarily need to collect payments in multiple markets and currencies. More crucially, you’ll have to convince at least several millions of people to hand over money for your product. That’s a tough sell, particularly if your product is optional, which almost all software products are.

A more well-trodden path is to make your product completely free for end users. Facebook does this: anyone can create a Facebook account for free and start using it. Of course, this means you’ll have to figure out some way of generating revenue from this user base. Advertisting comes to mind. Less savoury practices such as data collection and sale also come to mind as well.

And finally, the most pressing matter: what exactly makes you want to build something for one billion people? Why start there?

The wonderful Gerald Weinberg once wrote that things are the way the are because they got that way. While this quote predates Weinberg’s writing, it is a great way to think about product work. Something used by billions of people was previously used by millions of people, and that product was used by thousands of people, and so on. A billion people is a lot of people: thinking of what they want or need uniformly is basically impossible.

Now music is one thing that a billion people might have in common, whether it’s music enjoyment or performance. However this is still a big nut to crack, and likely would need some deep questioning: what about enjoying music is common to such a large group of people? How big is the diffence between listening to music and creating music? These aren’t just product questions to be discussed in requirements meetings. Questions of this nature philosophical and profound, not to mention extremely complex.

Overall, I’m skeptical of any startup plan that includes “impacting 1 billion” people as a first order goal. The numbers don’t support it.