8. Define Your Market as Narrowly as Possible

“One percent of a huge market” is not a strategy: incumbents will defend that share and a generic product gives customers no reason to switch. A narrow market lets a startup become uniquely relevant, focus distribution, and operate below a leader’s threshold of concern. Facebook’s first market was not humanity; it was Harvard.

Size the opening bottom-up by naming the customers you can plausibly win one by one. Build the best product and distribution system for that niche, earn a number-one position, then expand into adjacent segments. It is better to own a pond and grow from it than disappear in an ocean.

Original sketch and model by Paras Chopra. Read the source chapter.