Everything apps vs wedges

Aug 05 2024

Everything apps are apps like Clickup, Airtable, Odoo, Monday, and Bluewind.

Wedges are what you launch when you go to market.

It's hard to balance between these two things.

If you're like me you want to build everything, because it's what needs to be done. I have stopped believing in integrations. You need one platform for your whole business. The question is not if, but when.

At the same time, you need to start somewhere.

And it's very easy for your wedge to become your company: this makes very successful stories, but frustrated customers. I love Loom, Front, Salesforce, Hubspot, Clay. But I hate trying to build my business on top of them because they have different APIs, data models, pricing structures, rate limitings, SSO taxes, etc, etc...

So these companies nailed the wedge, but not the everything app. It makes sense because of how opposed these concepts are.

• allow people to create their own apps / consume the app they need
• giving a lot of power and control / a clear path to follow
• require people to be proactive / reactive
• hard to sell to someone because he doesn't want "everything", he wants something that solves a specific problem / easy to sell to someone because easily identifiable problem
• tends to be very sticky / harder to make sticky
• allow people to create / allow people to correct.

I think the pillar of a company has to be the platform. I call this the console. The console allows anything to be built.

But at the same time, this console should allow to create mini apps (wedges) that follow a clear identifiable path.

The combination of these "Tinder" experiences (reactive) and this "console" experience (proactive) is very powerful.

I would say that most companies nailing one tends to not nail the other.

So the console of Bluewind is the everything app. The wedge is the mini app you can produce from the console.

And I hope that by mixing these 2 things, I will be able to get the short term benefits of a wedge (GTM) and the long term benefits of an everything app (stickiness).