Developing a product for a newer market is a black box. We know nothing; the market research and user interview have their limitations. A lot comes with the founder’s conviction and a limited set of anchor customers. It has been my learning while building B2B software for over four years.
The brain gets tempted to expand the market size, deviate from the core. It could be because of multiple reasons: short-term cash flow, increasing the total addressable market, etc. We get short-sighted and miss the long term product vision and end up becoming a sandwich, something as a product we never thought of being.
It hurts the team the most because they see an organization diverging from its core vision and output getting fragmented.
As a leader, your job is to eliminate this confusion and sail through this paradox with clarity.