Build for one, scale for many: the greatest products are built by solving real problems for real people

While companies may strive for innovation and rightly so, the foundation for sustained success lies in designing solutions that resonate with users’ specific needs. It’s easy to get carried away chasing broad markets or building for everyone’s needs at once, but the most successful products often start by designing for one or an identified persona; you feel as though they were designed just for you.

When done right, these solutions can grow to impact entire markets. Think how many Nigerians resonate with PiggyVest and OPay.

A common pitfall you see in product development is people trying to solve for everyone at the same time without first deeply understanding the jobs to be done.  You can easily prevent this with an obsessive focus on a specific user persona. Identify their pain points, immerse yourself in their daily routine, and design solutions tailored to their context. When a product solves a problem so effectively that a user feels it was built just for them, you’ve created something that will resonate with many others facing similar challenges.

Building user-centred products doesn’t stop at identifying problems — it’s about staying deeply engaged throughout the process. At its core, it is about starting small, focusing on a specific user and their unique pain points. When I led the project to launch Sendy in Lagos and Abidjan, we adopted a similar approach. Instead of trying to tackle all logistics problems at once, we focused on social sellers; individuals selling on social media who struggled with fulfillment.

We spent hours observing how they worked, understanding bottlenecks, and uncovering needs they didn’t even articulate, like ensuring their businesses could keep running while they emigrated to other countries. By designing for this specific group, we built a service that not only solved their immediate challenges but also laid the groundwork for scaling across broader markets.

The core of building user-centered products begins with discovery, rooted in research. You are not just listening to what your users say they need but also observing how they interact with existing tools, and understanding the workarounds they have created to overcome current limitations.

These workarounds often reveal insights into what users value most and where the opportunity lies for delivering a better experience. The goal is not just to gather data but to uncover the emotional and functional elements that drive user behaviour.

Once the core problem is clearly defined, the focus shifts to iterative design and validation. The beauty of designing for one is that you have a clear target to validate against. Rapid prototyping and testing with this user group ensure that the product’s features deliver real value. At this stage, it’s essential to embrace simplicity.

A common mistake when scaling is overloading the product with features in an attempt to anticipate every possible use case. In many cases, you end up diluting the core experience. Instead, prioritize solving the core problem very well, and resist the temptation to prematurely broaden your features.

Planning for scale requires intentionality. A useful framework here is the “1:10:100” thinking; designing for one user in a way that can easily scale to 10 and eventually 100 without breaking the product. This requires building flexible systems that accommodate growth without sacrificing performance or reliability.

At Fiducia, a supply chain financing marketplace, where I led product development to address Nigeria’s $160Bn+ credit financing gap for MSMEs, scalability was at the core of our design philosophy. We spoke to over 30 financial institutions of varying sizes, regulators, and industry stakeholders, incorporating their feedback into a modular product architecture with abstraction layers that could flexibly adapt to new geographies or customer segments with minimal effort.

Whether accommodating a compliance-heavy commercial bank or a nimble fintech startup, the platform was built to scale without sacrificing performance or reliability. By anchoring the design in scalability and flexibility while remaining deeply user-focused, we were able to lay the foundation for solving a complex problem at scale, going beyond the immediate market and positioning the product to nimbly grow across industries and borders.

However, building for one and scaling for many isn’t just about technology; it’s also about organizational mindset. Scalable products require scalable teams. This requires a culture of continuous learning, where teams are encouraged to test hypotheses, embrace failure as a learning tool, and iterate based on real-world feedback. Organizations that build this culture tend to produce products that are not only innovative but also deeply relevant to their users.

Another key consideration is maintaining the balance between customization and standardization. As a product scales and you expand into new regions, there is pressure to add features that cater to niche use cases or specific customer or investor demands. While some level of customization may be necessary, you would want to avoid excessive fragmentation. The challenge is to design features that address the needs of your core user group while maintaining coherence.

As you do this, you need to think about how you apply extensibility into the product, allowing users to continually integrate your product into their daily lives without compromising the overall experience.

The success of a user-centred product strategy is measured by its impact on business growth. Products that deliver real value to users drive engagement, retention, and word-of-mouth referrals; key drivers of sustainable growth. But this impact is only possible when teams stay disciplined in their focus on the user. I’ve seen firsthand how the temptation to chase trends or pursue growth at all costs has led to a trail of failed companies.

The most successful companies understand that long-term growth comes from staying grounded in the needs of the people they serve and a sustainable business model.

For me, the lesson is simple: Develop a repeatable, scalable methodology for identifying and addressing meaningful user needs. By combining rigorous research, strategic flexibility, and technological adaptability, organizations can transform focused solutions into scalable, impactful products that genuinely change users’ experiences.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adeoluwa Oni is a product strategy expert with over a decade of experience in product development, go-to-market strategy, and digital transformation within the financial services industry. Passionate about innovation and sustainable growth, he has led cross-functional teams to deliver impactful business solutions that address market needs and optimize operations.

An advocate for career development and entrepreneurship, Adeoluwa mentors aspiring business leaders through the Tony Elumelu Foundation and is the founder of Incrova, a community dedicated to career growth and democratizing access to opportunities. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and a Kaplan-Norton Balanced Scorecard expert, committed to fostering innovation and creating lasting impact in the business world.

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