“We decided to go all in on that and we've chosen to do nothing else besides that one thing, which is called pop-ups. Do one thing and do that one thing phenomenally. When you're a younger founder, the one currency you have that the incumbents of your industry don't have is speed and urgency.”

Cut every feature that is not the one thing customers actually point at

Alia was originally a loyalty program plus education tool plus pop-up; Sean killed the first two and shipped only pop-up features going forward, even renaming the product page from 'product features' to 'pop-up features.' The radical scope cut is what let a 12-person team outrun 15-20 year incumbents.