#398 – How Scott Reynolds bet on depth over breadth and built a position that sticks

A story about choosing the hard problem—and winning because of it.

This episode is for sales-led SaaS founders who feel their product lead shrinking—and wondering what actually creates a position competitors can't close.

Most founders chase obvious markets. Scott Reynolds chose a complicated one nobody else wanted.

Scott, co-founder and CEO of UpCodes, is a trained architect who has lived the pain of navigating construction regulations. Weeks buried in phone-book-sized regulations that no software had organized—until he built it.

While others built broad tools for obvious problems, Scott went narrow and deep. His conviction: if it's not dramatically better, it isn't worth building.

And this inspired me to invite Scott to my podcast. We explore why going deep into one vertical beats building broad for everyone. Scott shares what forces professionals to call a tool irreplaceable, why vertical depth compounds, and what a decade of quiet data does when AI arrives. You'll discover why his bet keeps getting stronger.

We also zoom in on two of the 10 traits that define remarkable software companies: – Aim to be different, not just better – Offer something valuable and desirable

Scott's story proves that remarkable companies find the problems others walk past—and build advantages that compound.

Here's one of Scott's quotes that captures his thinking on competition in the AI era:

"We view that marriage of our data and their data to give them a unique instance of AI that can just answer questions better than their competitor could. And I think that's a very critical component of competition in an AI era."

By listening to this episode, you'll learn:

• Why a 10% improvement rarely moves anyone—and what threshold actually drives adoption
• What choosing a vertical others ignore reveals about long-term defensibility
• When combining your data with customer data creates an advantage nobody else can access
• Why the hardest problems to solve are often the strongest positions to own

For more information about the guest from this week:

Guest: Scott Reynolds, Co-founder and CEO UpCodes

Website: up.codes