There are varying degrees of what it means to be horizontal. Horizontal-ness, so to speak, refers to the number of use cases and buyers a product span

Building and taking a horizontal product to market is hard

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2024-11-15 20:00:05

There are varying degrees of what it means to be horizontal. Horizontal-ness, so to speak, refers to the number of use cases and buyers a product spans. The more use cases and buyers, the more horizontal. 

Equals, the next-generation spreadsheet, is about as horizontal as it gets. Consider who uses a spreadsheet and for what. The combinations are infinite. 

From the moment I put together the first Equals pitch deck, nearly everyone told us how hard it would be to build and take to a horizontal product to market.

Thus began a multi-year journey to internalize what it means to be horizontal vs. vertical, understand the implicit tradeoffs, and grapple with the challenges of bringing a horizontal product (and our massive vision) to market.

We set out to build Equals in early 2021. Our vision was (and remains) to build the next spreadsheet. Born from a frustration with BI tools, data notebooks, and the wide range of out-of-the-box reporting solutions, our first launch struck a chord. 

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