If you want a product that scales in 2026, you need to stop thinking horizontally. That's the mistake I see 99% of founders make when they start out, and I'll show you exactly how to fix it.
The mistake 99% of founders make
When you're building a new product, it's not uncommon to catch yourself trying to reinvent the wheel. You want to come up with the next Uber, the next Facebook. You have that idea that just feels right, you tell your friends and business partners, you ship your first demo, and everyone's hyped.
But if that's how you feel right now, there's a good chance you're making the one mistake almost every founder makes. I call it horizontal thinking.
A founder thinks horizontally when they try to expand a solution that already exists, overloading it with features to look "more complete" than the competition. That's simply not how you become the next Mark Zuckerberg, and here's why. You're burning resources and funding to fight in a market someone already owns, and honestly, users rarely switch over a slightly better UX or one extra feature.
Think vertically with AI
If you're serious about dominating a specific industry you already know well, the best move in 2026 is building vertically with AI. Here's what I mean. Look at every new app that has made it big in the last two years: Cluely, Granola, Lovable, Harvey. What they have in common isn't just that they're AI-native. It's that they're laser-focused on applying AI to absolutely dominate a single industry vertical.
The Granola playbook
Take Granola. It's your go-to for recording meetings, and it doesn't care about managing your calendar or being your to-do list. It does one thing: it transcribes your meetings, summarises them with proprietary AI, and gives you a layer to chat with that data and make decisions. That laser focus is exactly how Granola raised $125M at a $1.5B valuation in March 2026, in less than a year.
How to build vertically
So here's what to do instead:
- Pick the one industry you understand better than almost anyone.
- Find the manual process inside it that quietly eats hours every week.
- Build an AI app that solves that one problem better than anything else on the market.
Your unfair advantage
Your unfair advantage is the industry knowledge you already have. Everyone building horizontally is ignoring that, and leaving millions on the table.
So save this for the next time you're picking what to build. And if you want a custom breakdown on how to do it, book an intro call and I'll personally help you scope the next build.
