Why KEVOS is starting broad

Update, October 2026. As this article anticipated, KEVOS’s focus has since narrowed. KEVOS now provides engineering and CAD support, manufacturing support, operations improvement and engineering project support; see Services. The article is kept as a record of the earlier reasoning.

A common piece of advice for new businesses is to pick a niche and commit to it. It is good advice once you know which niche is worth committing to. KEVOS does not know that yet, and pretending otherwise would mean making the most important decision with the least information.

So KEVOS is starting broad, on purpose, for a limited time.

This article explains what that means in practice, why it is a deliberate choice rather than indecision, the risks it carries and how they are managed, how ideas are judged, and how the focus is expected to narrow as evidence accumulates. It is also, in part, a record: if KEVOS’s direction changes later, this is the reasoning it started from.

What “broad” means here

Broad does not mean doing everything. It means keeping several areas open while the evidence comes in: products, technology, practical systems and ideas that might become any of those.

Each area is held to the same standard. Is there a real problem? Do the people who have it care enough to change? Can KEVOS build something that is clearly better than what they do now?

The areas that hold up under that scrutiny get more attention. The ones that do not are set aside, and the reasons are written down.

The four areas

KEVOS’s Insights are organised into four categories, which also describe the areas being explored:

• Ideas: ways of thinking about problems, strategy and opportunity, some of which may become products or systems.
• Products: physical or digital things that could solve a specific problem for specific people.
• Technology: tools, platforms and methods that make products and systems possible, including automation and artificial intelligence.
• Business: the economics, operations and practices that decide whether any of the above can be sustained.

The categories overlap, and that is intentional. A useful product depends on sound technology and sound economics. Keeping all four in view at once makes it easier to see which combinations are worth pursuing.

Why not commit now?

Committing early has an obvious appeal: a clear story, a clear plan, a clear pitch. The cost is less obvious. Once money, time and identity are invested in a particular product, it becomes harder to admit that the original assumption was wrong.

Psychologists describe several tendencies that make this worse. The sunk cost effect makes people continue with something because of what they have already invested, rather than because of what it will produce. Confirmation bias leads people to notice evidence that supports their existing view and discount evidence against it. Identity plays a part too: once a founder is publicly “the person building X”, changing direction can feel like failure rather than learning.

None of these tendencies disappears by starting broad. But they are much weaker before large commitments have been made.

Exploring is cheaper than building

Exploring first is cheaper. Conversations, sketches, small prototypes and short experiments cost a fraction of a full product build, and they surface problems while it is still easy to change course.

The difference in cost is often large. A conversation with someone who has a problem costs an hour. A rough prototype might cost a few days and a modest amount of material. A fully developed product, with tooling, compliance, inventory and marketing, can cost many months and a great deal of money. Discovering a fatal flaw at the conversation stage is far better than discovering it after launch.

Exploring and exploiting

Decision researchers describe a general tension between exploring (trying new options to learn about them) and exploiting (committing to the best option known so far). Exploring too little risks settling on a mediocre choice because better ones were never tried. Exploring too much risks never benefiting from anything, because effort is always spread across new options.

Good strategies usually explore more at the beginning, when little is known, and shift towards exploiting as knowledge accumulates. That is the pattern KEVOS intends to follow: broad exploration now, narrowing deliberately as evidence shows which directions are strongest.

How ideas are judged

Exploring broadly only works if every idea is held to clear, consistent standards. Otherwise, the most exciting idea wins, rather than the best one.

KEVOS’s Insights set out several of the lenses being used.

Is the problem real and worth solving? The questions in What makes a useful product worth building? cover frequency, severity, current workarounds and willingness to change, and they emphasise evidence over enthusiasm.

Could it become a durable business? The series on financial statements, summarised in Designing a business for durability, asks whether customers would keep choosing it, whether the need will last, what it costs to stand still, whether it can fund itself and where its value would live.

Can it be tested cheaply? Notes on prototyping early describes how to turn uncertain ideas into specific questions and answer them with the least possible building.

Is the opportunity genuinely qualified? The sales series, including Qualifying opportunities, offers a disciplined way to decide which opportunities deserve time and which do not.

Using the same lenses for every idea makes comparisons fairer and makes it easier to explain, later, why one direction was chosen over another.

How the focus will narrow

Broad is a starting position, not a permanent one. As specific initiatives show promise, they will move from exploring to developing and testing, and the business will organise itself around what works.

That progress can still be assessed using clear internal status definitions:

Moving from one status to the next requires evidence, not just enthusiasm. An idea moves from exploring to developing when the problem is clearly real and a promising approach has been identified. It moves to testing when there is something concrete for real people to try. It is released only when the tests justify it.

Initiatives that do not hold up are archived, not quietly forgotten. An archived idea, with its reasons written down, is a useful record: it prevents the same idea being revisited without new information, and it shows how decisions were made.

Signals that an idea deserves more focus

Some signals suggest an initiative deserves more attention than the others:

• People describe the problem without prompting. When the people who have a problem raise it themselves, it is likely to be real and important to them.
• Workarounds are already costing money. Existing spending on clumsy solutions shows willingness to pay.
• Evidence climbs the ladder. Conversations turn into requests for follow-up, introductions, trial use or commitments.
• The economics look healthy under realistic assumptions. Margins work without heroic estimates.
• Cheap tests keep succeeding. Each prototype or experiment answers its question in the idea’s favour.
• The need looks lasting. The problem seems likely to exist, in some form, for many years.

When several of these signals appear together, the case for narrowing focus around that initiative becomes strong.

What KEVOS is not doing

Starting broad also means being clear about what KEVOS is not doing.

KEVOS is not presenting ideas as products before they exist. It is not listing services it does not yet offer, and it is not claiming customers, partners or results it has not achieved. KEVOS only presents real initiatives as real, and the Insights distinguish between summaries of established knowledge and KEVOS’s own observations.

This restraint is deliberate. A young business can be tempted to look larger and more certain than it is. But credibility built on claims that later prove hollow is fragile, while credibility built on an honest record grows stronger with time.

The risks of starting broad

Starting broad has its own risks, and they deserve honesty.

Spreading too thin. Exploring many areas at once can mean nothing receives enough attention to be tested properly. The response is to limit how many initiatives are actively explored at any one time, and to finish or archive one before adding another.

Never committing. Exploration can become a comfortable place to stay, because it postpones the hard work and risk of building. The response is to set decision points: specific moments when each initiative must move forward, pause or stop.

Lacking a clear story. A broad business is harder to explain than a focused one. People may reasonably ask what KEVOS actually does. The honest answer, for now, is that it is exploring, and the Insights explain what that exploration looks like.

Shallow expertise. Depth often comes from focus. The response is to go deep on the specific initiatives that progress, even while the overall business remains broad.

None of these risks is a reason not to explore. Each is a reason to explore with discipline.

Writing it down

A distinctive part of KEVOS’s approach is that the reasoning is recorded and, where appropriate, published. These Insights articles serve several purposes:

• They clarify thinking. Writing an argument down exposes gaps that remain hidden in conversation.
• They create a record. Decisions can be revisited later with the original reasoning in view.
• They invite challenge. Readers who see a flaw in the reasoning can say so.
• They build a body of knowledge. Over time, the articles become a reference for KEVOS’s own work and, hopefully, useful to others facing similar questions.

If the direction changes, the record will show why. That is part of the point.

Patience with the process

Exploration can feel slow from the outside, and sometimes from the inside too. Weeks spent on conversations and rough prototypes produce no products, no revenue and few visible results. The pressure to “just pick something” is real.

The articles KEVOS has published on durable businesses offer some reassurance here. The most valuable businesses are usually built around needs that last and advantages that compound, and those take time to identify and develop. A few months spent choosing well can matter far more over the life of a business than a few months saved by choosing quickly.

Patience does not mean drift, though. Every exploration has a question, a budget and a decision point. When the evidence is clear, the decision is made.

A lesson for other founders

Starting broad will not suit every founder. Someone with deep experience in a particular industry, a clear view of an unmet need and early customers ready to buy should probably commit. Exploring broadly would only delay them.

But for founders who are genuinely uncertain about where their best opportunity lies, a period of deliberate, disciplined exploration can be valuable. A few principles from KEVOS’s approach may help:

• Time-box the exploration. Decide in advance how long it will last before a direction must be chosen.
• Use consistent criteria. Judge every idea by the same standards.
• Keep tests cheap. Use conversations, sketches and rough prototypes before serious investment.
• Limit active explorations. A few ideas explored properly beat many explored superficially.
• Record decisions and reasons. Especially the ideas you stop.
• Watch for the pull of excitement. The most exciting idea is not always the best.

What this means for readers

For anyone following KEVOS, starting broad means a few things in practice.

The Insights will cover a wide range of topics: products, technology, systems, business practice and the ideas behind them. Some articles summarise established knowledge, such as the series on financial statements and on sales practice. Others describe KEVOS’s own reasoning and, as work progresses, its own experiments.

Where useful, the Insights will document initiatives and lessons as they develop.

And KEVOS welcomes conversations. If you face a problem that might be worth solving, or you see a flaw in the reasoning here, the contact page is the place to say so.

Bringing it together

KEVOS is starting broad because the most important decision, what to focus on, deserves the most information. Exploration is cheaper than building, and it is easier to change direction before large commitments are made.

Starting broad is not a permanent state or an excuse to avoid commitment. It is a deliberate, time-limited phase with clear criteria, visible progress and written reasoning. As evidence accumulates, the focus will narrow, and the record will show how and why.