Find Your Own Pond
Win not by beating rivals but by defining a market only you occupy.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 80%
Thompson argues the internet rewards two positions and punishes the middle: massive scaled aggregators that win through network effects and zero-marginal-cost distribution, or small, cheaply-run niche players who need only a committed audience of a few thousand true fans. Legacy publishers died because they were caught in between — too small for aggregation economics, too expensive to survive on a fractured audience. The strategic move for an independent creator or small business is not to out-compete incumbents in a crowded category, but to define a narrow-enough 'pond' where you can become the single dominant fish, since the internet's real opportunity is breadth of possible niches, not depth within any one of them.
Origin
Extracted from Acquired
Core principles
- 01The internet has a barbell effect: value accrues to the very large (aggregation/scale) or the very small (near-zero cost structure), not the middle.
- 02Success is measured by dominance of a specific niche, not by competitive share of a broad category.
- 03You only need a small, committed base if your cost structure is low enough.
- 04Two creators covering seemingly the same broad space can both win if they define different enough ponds.
How to run it
- 1
Diagnose where you sit on the barbell
Honestly assess whether your venture can reach true aggregation scale or whether it should run lean and target a narrow, well-defined audience; avoid strategies that leave you stuck in the expensive, undifferentiated middle.
- 2
Define your pond narrowly and specifically
Choose parameters (topic, format, depth, cadence) precise enough that almost no one else occupies exactly that space, rather than trying to be the best in an already crowded broad category.
- 3
Become the single dominant fish in that pond
Concentrate all effort on being unmistakably the best or only option within your specific niche instead of spreading effort trying to compete broadly.
- 4
Let adjacent ponds coexist
Recognize other creators covering seemingly similar ground (e.g., another Apple analyst, another social-media reporter) aren't necessarily competitors if their pond is defined differently.
Pro tip Check whether a rival's audience differs from yours in format or depth (e.g., daily news vs. deep analysis) before assuming you're in the same pond.
Watch out Trying to be a generalist in an already-occupied category after someone else got there first is much harder than finding an undefined niche.
In the wild
Cybart modeled his independent research business closely on Stratechery but picked an even narrower pond: covering only Apple, every single day.
→ He built an eight-plus-year independent career as 'the' daily Apple analyst without directly competing with Thompson's broader tech-and-strategy pond.
Newton chose to cover social media news exhaustively, including live Twitter turmoil, a cadence and depth Thompson deliberately avoids.
→ Newton became the default destination for daily social-platform news, a distinct pond from Thompson's less frequent, more analytical coverage.
Common mistakes
Staying stuck in the middle
Old publishers were too small to get aggregation economics and too costly to survive on a fractured, niche audience — the worst of both ends of the barbell.
Confusing a crowded topic with a crowded pond
Many people can cover 'tech' or 'Apple,' but few define the exact niche (cadence, depth, audience) precisely enough to dominate it outright.
Is it for you?
Not ideal for
Businesses that genuinely require winner-take-all scale (e.g., platforms needing network effects) rather than a defensible niche.
From the transcript
“there's always a barbell effect you're either very large or very small”
“the key to success on the Internet is you want to be the biggest fish in the pond but the success metric is not competing…”
From the episode
Stratechery (with Ben Thompson)
Ben Thompson