Build for the 80, Kill Your Darlings
When a product is loved but too small for the mission, serve the silent 80% and abandon what the vocal 20% cling to
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 90%
For mass-market or 'democratize-a-medium' products, the loudest users are usually the niche 20% whose requests pull you deeper into a small pocket. Maya's rule: anchor every decision to the mission, build for the silent 80% who are your real target, and be willing to abandon a beloved-but-plateauing product ('kill your darlings') because 'working but not working incredibly well' is the trap most founders get stuck in.
Origin
Attributed by Maya to the common '80/20 rule' (she notes 'I don't think we made this up'); 'kill your darlings' is a long-standing writing/editing maxim she and the Anchor team adopted.
Core principles
- 01Anchor every decision to an unwavering mission; everything else is mutable
- 02Your vocal 20% are not your target if the target is 'everyone on the planet'
- 03Users don't always know what to ask for — read the signal behind the noise
- 04'Working but not working incredibly well' is the most common and most dangerous state
How to run it
- 1
Judge the product against the mission, not just retention
Even with strong retention and slow growth, ask whether this path can actually reach the scale your mission demands. If there's no path to the big vision, a loved product still isn't enough.
Pro tip Have a firm, unwavering mission set at founding so you have a fixed reference to judge against.
Watch out If a massive world-changing business isn't your goal, this rule doesn't apply — that's a legitimate choice.
- 2
Filter signal from vocal-minority noise
Weight what the silent majority needs over what the loud 20% demand. Building for the vocal minority digs you deeper into a niche.
Pro tip Explicitly name it: 'we're building for the 80' as a repeatable team mantra.
Watch out The 20% will always be louder — don't mistake volume for representativeness.
- 3
Kill the darling and rebuild toward the mission
When you decide, commit fully — rebuild the product even though it's painful and you'll feel guilty facing loyal users. Anchor rebuilt the whole app more than once.
Pro tip Terminology matters when convincing people — Maya reframed these as 'Evolutions,' not 'pivots.'
Watch out Expect a terrifying, guilt-laden transition where you're unsure it's a mistake the whole time you're building.
In the wild
Anchor 1.0's users loved it, were highly retained, even met and married through it — but Maya and Mike judged it would never reach the democratize-audio mission. They rebuilt into 2.0 (content creation / radio-station tools) that 1.0 users didn't want.
→ Numbers shot up post-launch and the product finally reached the broad audience they'd imagined.
Common mistakes
Building for the vocal 20%
Prioritizing the loudest users pulls you deeper into a niche and away from the mass audience a democratizing mission requires.
Settling for 'working but not great'
A product that has some product-market fit but no path to the mission's scale traps founders into never making the hard change.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders of mass-market or democratizing products deciding whether to abandon a loved-but-plateauing product
Not ideal for
Niche or lifestyle businesses where deeply serving a small passionate segment IS the goal
From the transcript
“we want to be building for the 80 and even though the 20 are going to be more vocal that's just gonna like get you…”
“you really have to be willing to kill your (25:30) dog Your Darlings”
“that's probably the most common cases something is working but it's not working incredibly well what do we do”
From the episode
Building Anchor, selling to Spotify, and lessons learned
Maya Prohovnik (Spotify’s Head of Podcast Product)