Wedge First, Win Later: How to Sneak Into a Market (the surprising strategy used by PayPal, Salesforce, and Notion)

Let’s talk golf.

You’re staring down the fairway. There’s the green, guarded by bunkers, a slight uphill slope, and just a short distance to go. You could muscle your way through with a 9-iron, maybe even a putter if you're feeling reckless. Or, you pull out your A-wedge.

The attack wedge. The club designed to get you precisely where you want to go with control, loft, and finesse.

Business is no different. While everyone else is swinging hard with the same playbook, price cuts, generic campaigns, overhyped features, you need a wedge. A sharp, strategic entry that slips past the noise and lands you right where it matters: in your ideal customer’s decision zone.

So let’s dig into how to find your business’ wedge, your unfair advantage, your angle of attack, your path to competitive dominance.

What Exactly Is a Wedge?

A wedge, in business, is your unique way in. It’s the narrow beachhead that allows you to gain traction, earn trust, and eventually expand.

It’s not a gimmick. It’s not your logo. It’s not “great customer service.”

A wedge is a strategy to enter a market by solving a small but painful problem really well for a specific group of people.

It’s how PayPal took over eBay.

PayPal didn’t try to be the default payment method for the entire internet on day one. That would’ve been impossible. Instead, it zoomed in on a single, high-friction use case: peer-to-peer payments between strangers on eBay.

At the time, buying and selling on eBay was risky. People were mailing cash or checks. Scams were common. There was no easy or safe way to pay.

PayPal saw the pain and delivered a promise that resonated: “Use PayPal on eBay and we’ll protect your transactions.”

It was simple, urgent, and incredibly valuable to eBay’s users. The result? eBay sellers started adding “PayPal accepted” to their listings. Buyers began preferring it. It spread like wildfire—user by user, auction by auction.

That wedge, eBay users with a clear pain and a need for trust, opened the door. From there, PayPal expanded into other markets, but it never forgot how it got in.

It’s how Zoom won by being the easy-to-use video tool when everyone else felt like a 90s fax machine.

Before Zoom, there was WebEx, Skype, GoToMeeting. All complicated, buggy, and bloated. In a world that suddenly needed frictionless, high-quality video calls (thanks, pandemic), Zoom’s wedge was simplicity and clarity. No logins. No downloads. Just click the link and you’re in. It first gained traction with individuals, then small businesses, then entire enterprises.

Zoom’s wedge? Removing the pain of getting into a call and delighting users from day one.

Why You’re Struggling: No Wedge

If you’re a business owner or exec, you’ve felt the pain:

• You’re shouting into the void, and no one’s listening. 

  You’ve launched your product, pushed out your marketing campaigns, posted on social media, sent the email blasts but nothing comes back. No traction. No conversations. Just digital tumbleweeds.

  
  

• Your sales team is working harder than ever, and closing less.

  They’re putting in the hours, chasing leads, jumping on demos. But the win rate is dropping. Deals stall. Decision-makers vanish. And the team starts wondering: Is it us? Or is the market just impossible?

  
  

• Your marketing budget feels like kindling.

  You light it up, expecting a fire. A spark, at least. But instead? A brief flame but nothing catches. Ads run, clicks trickle in, and your ROI looks more like a ghost story than a growth story.

  
  

• Competitors are outrunning you with less talent, fewer features, and more momentum.

  You see them in the headlines. Winning clients you used to pitch. The problem? You’re trying to win the whole game at once. You’re aiming for the green with a driver when you should be using a wedge. 

You don’t need to be everything to everyone. You need to be essential to someone.

When Do You Need a Wedge?

Let’s make it simple:

• You’re entering a new market? You need a wedge.

• Your growth has stalled? You need a wedge.

• You’re competing with giants? You need a wedge.

• Your product is solid but your message isn’t landing? You need a wedge.

Wedges aren’t just for startups. They’re for anyone trying to make a dent or recover relevance. Improve their game!

How to Find Your Wedge (With Real-World Stories and Steps)

Here’s where the rubber meets the road. Or the club hits the grass. No time to shank it now.

1. Start Small, Think Deep

Look for a tight segment of your market with an urgent, underserved pain. Find that narrow crack and wedge yourself in.

Most business owners make the mistake of trying to be everything to everyone. The thinking goes: “If we go wide, we’ll get more customers.” But the truth? The wider you go at the start, the harder it is to gain traction.

Instead, focus. Shrink your audience. Look for a small segment of the market that’s in pain. Deep pain. Something that’s keeping them up at night. Something they’re already trying (and failing) to solve with duct tape, spreadsheets, or sheer willpower.

This is where your wedge begins. Not with mass, but with friction.

Example: Salesforce

When Salesforce started, they didn’t aim to be “the #1 CRM for enterprises.” That would’ve been suicide. Big companies already had clunky, expensive, on-premise software, and the IT departments were married to it.

So Salesforce looked elsewhere. They zoomed in on a specific pain point: small sales teams hated installing and maintaining software. These teams were tired of waiting on IT. Tired of CD-ROMs and endless updates. Tired of complexity.

So Salesforce offered them one promise: “No software.”

It was genius. It was specific. It was a wedge. And it worked.

From there, Salesforce expanded into bigger teams, bigger companies, bigger problems. But the door they pried open first? That small, underserved niche of frustrated salespeople.

Exercise: Grab a pen and paper and have a go at these questions: 

• Who’s quietly frustrated and feels overlooked in your market?(Not the loudest complainers but the ones who've just given up.)

  
  

• What’s a tedious, painful task they secretly wish would disappear?(Something they dread every time it pops up on their to-do list.)

  
  

• What do they grumble about when using ther current solutions?(Is it too slow? Too complicated? Too expensive? Too outdated?)

That’s what you want to find. A niche with urgency, friction, and unmet needs.

2. Be 10x Better at One Thing

Don’t try to win everywhere, just win somewhere.

Most companies try to differentiate by adding more: more features, more offers, more bells and whistles. But differentiation doesn’t come from stacking features. It comes from domination.

So pick one thing. One outcome. One capability. And be unmistakably, jaw-droppingly better at it.

Not just “a little better.” Not just “pretty good.” Be 10x better. So good it’s obvious. So good people talk about it. So good it makes your competitors look like they’re selling dial-up in a 5G world.

That’s your wedge. Not your product suite. Not your tech stack. One atomic capability that solves one burning problem better than anyone else.

Example: Calendly didn’t try to be a full scheduling suite. It just made “finding a time to meet” painless. That was the wedge.

Exercise:

• What’s the one thing your customers need to just work, every time?(Think: the frustrating core task they can’t afford to fail.)

  
  

• Where are your competitors dropping the ball on that one thing?(Think: slowness, clunky UX, poor reliability, bad service.)

  
  

• If you could be 10x better at that one thing, what would it take?(Faster? Easier? Smarter? More delightful?)

  
  

Double down on that. Sell that. That’s your wedge.

3. Focus on a High-Trust, High-Need Persona

Your wedge works best when it’s aimed at people who need you and are trusted by others.

In every industry, there’s a group of decision-makers or influencers that hold weight. When they love something, others follow. When they buy, others copy.

You want your wedge to appeal to this group. Not just because they buy but because they influence buying.

The mistake most companies make?

They chase big titles or big logos. Instead, chase trust. Who are the connectors in your market? The linchpins? The respected pros that others turn to when making decisions?

They may not have the biggest budget but they have pull. Win their hearts, and the wedge widens fast.

Example: Figma didn’t launch with a full suite for every product team. Instead, they zoomed in on one persona: UI designers.

Designers were already collaborating in Google Docs and Dropbox, but traditional design tools didn’t allow real-time, browser-based collaboration. Figma gave them that beautifully.

And here’s the trick: designers are trusted. They influence engineering, product, and brand. So when designers switched to Figma, the rest of the org followed.

Exercise:

• Who in your market has the pain and the pull?(Think: the go-to person others ask for tools, vendors, advice.)

• Whose trust unlocks access to others in the buying committee?(Think: the “champion” who brings your product in through the side door.)

• What would it look like to serve that person better than anyone else?(Think: specific workflows, faster setup, clearer outcomes, better status.)

  
  

4. Make the Wedge Obvious in Your Marketing

If your wedge isn’t obvious, it doesn’t exist.

Most messaging is vague. “All-in-one solution.” “Flexible, scalable, powerful.” It’s word soup. Customers don’t feel seen, they feel sold to.

The best marketing makes the wedge unmistakable. It screams, “This is for YOU.” It speaks directly to the pain of your niche, highlights the thing you do 10x better, and showcases your sharp point of view.

No jargon. No vague promises. Just clear, bold, specific positioning that makes the right people say, “Finally.”

Examples: 

Notion didn’t start by saying, “All-in-one productivity platform.” They marketed to product managers and startup teams who were duct-taping tools together.

Their wedge? “Replace Slack, Trello, Google Docs, and Asana with one tool.”

Exercise:

• If someone lands on your homepage, can they tell exactly who it’s for and what problem it solves? (Be honest, would your ideal customer nod or bounce?)

• What’s your version of “No software” or “Replace Trello and Slack”? (Think: one clear, memorable line that says it all.)

• Where in your marketing can you make the wedge sharper? (Think: headlines, emails, demos, ads, even cold outreach.)

  
  

5. Use the Wedge to Expand

Your wedge isn’t your cage, it’s your door.

Once you’ve broken in, earned trust, and solved one painful problem for one specific group, you earn the right to solve more.

But here’s the key: don’t abandon your wedge. Leverage it. Let it pull you into adjacent needs and audiences, step by step.

Start by going deeper (more products for the same persona). Then go wider (the same product for nearby personas).

That’s how real scale happens. Not by going broad too early, but by expanding from a strong, sharp point of entry.

Example: Amazon’s wedge was books. It nailed book-buying online. Then? Everything else.

Exercise:

• Once you’ve won a customer with your wedge, what’s the next painful problem they’ll need help solving? (Think: “What happens right after they use us?”)

• Which adjacent personas are already exposed to your wedge through your customers? (Think: cross-functional teams, nearby departments, partner orgs.)

• How can you deepen your value before you broaden your offering? (Think: integrations, training, workflows, complementary features.)

  
  

Wedges open doors. You just need to keep walking through them.

So What’s Your Wedge?

If you had to bet your business on solving one painful problem for one ideal customer, what would it be? That’s where your wedge lives.

You don’t need to outspend. You need to outfocus.

You don’t need to be louder. You need to be sharper.

And you don’t need to figure it all out alone.

At Craft we  help business leaders find and wield their wedge—strategically, surgically, and with serious results.

Let’s pull the right club from the bag. Get in touch today.