Chef's knife? Or Kiwi peeler?
A chef’s knife can do almost anything in the kitchen — chop, slice, dice, even peel if you’re determined enough. A kiwi peeler? It does exactly one thing, and only if you happen to have a ripe kiwi handy.
Lately, I've been thinking about this knife vs. peeler analogy as a way to make sense of the explosion of AI applications, startup ideas, and even how we teach kids math. There's a big difference between building general-purpose tools and building hyper-specific ones. And in a world where flexibility and adaptability matter more than ever, this distinction is becoming critical.
We can actually map this thinking along two important dimensions:
General-purpose vs. Specific-purpose: Is the tool versatile (like a knife) or narrow (like a kiwi peeler)?
DIY/raw tool vs. Productized/SaaS: Is the tool handed to you raw (you have to figure it out) or neatly packaged into a polished product?
Picture a 2x2 grid. In one corner, you have raw, general-purpose tools like ChatGPT itself — flexible but demanding more initiative from the user. In the opposite corner, you have polished, specific-purpose products like an "AI-powered interview platform" SaaS offering — clear, constrained, easy to adopt.
Where people land on this grid depends heavily on their goals, skills, and buying context:
Small teams, technical users, scrappy environments? They grab the chef’s knife. They want control and adaptability.
Large organizations with procurement cycles and compliance needs? They want the kiwi peeler — purpose-built SaaS with clear deliverables and support.
Startups validating an idea? Knife first, maybe peeler later, once they know exactly what needs doing.
This is true not just in AI, but in education too. Teaching kids standard math drills is a kiwi peeler move: it's fast, precise, but narrow. Teaching kids probability and flexible problem-solving early? That's a chef's knife — a skill that unlocks a lifetime of smarter decisions across unpredictable terrains.
One of the mistakes I see in both product-building and education is assuming that the "more specific" tool is always better because it's easier to understand or measure. But easy isn't always enduring. A chef's knife may take longer to master, but it prepares you for a far wider range of challenges.
The key question isn't "Is this tool good?" It's "In what contexts, and for whom, does this tool unlock the most value?"
Are we building (or learning) things that expect the world to stay static? Or are we equipping ourselves and others to thrive in a world that’s anything but?
I keep coming back to this: In a high-uncertainty, high-velocity world, we need more chef’s knives. In AI. In education. In how we think about investing, parenting, and building.
Because when the environment changes — and it will — the people holding versatile, adaptable tools will be the ones who can still cook up something extraordinary.
