Part of success in anything we do, and actually the biggest part, is choosing the right target. Why? That choice determines your next actions and how much energy and efforts will you have to spend on reaching your goal.
I’m saying this because it works in dating as much as in business. The shiniest girl in the bar is not always the best choice if you want to have a good time. The same is true in business. The shiniest market you can imagine is almost never the right choice to start with.
Good Narrow Market Example
You see, if you choose the right target market, and it means the narrowest possible target market that has the most acute pain from the problem you are trying to solve with the product you're building, that market understands what you are trying to build just from your first sentence of introduction.
"We get pre-school kids (3-5y) excited about making their own art - alone and together."
Say this to any parent that wants to entertain the artist in his daughter and you need to say no more. No need to say more.
It could say only "We get kids excited about making art," but they would end up talking to a lot of parents that have bigger kids, they'd have to answer questions if kids will do art themselves, if they let them play together, etc. Narrow market saves time and energy for everyone.
If you’ve chosen such a narrow market, you have saved yourself so much effort and time compared to the other options.
Issues With Broad(er) Market
For example, when you try to speak to a broader than the narrow market (or god forbid to everybody), people don’t get it. They just keep asking you to repeat, to give more examples of what it actually does and why it is useful. And even when you actually persuade them to start using it or buy into it, they’ll churn away.
Just look at these two screenshots from two apps I actually like, but I feel that just one is actually focusing on concrete persona / market 🤔
I know that Anytype folks "got inspired" by Notion but was a step in a wrong direction - everything app not only doesn't say anything to anyone, but it fails to recognize the fact that Notion is almost a household name. Hence, when Notion says, it's everything app, it already comes with context of facts -> Notion is used by different teams within corporations, by startups in different industries to build anything from content pipelines, to marketing plans or product roadmaps.
Anytype is missing this context. Such context does not transfer onto you just by saying the same line as your larger competitor does.
It would be totally different if they'd say ...
"Anytype is the everything app; think local-first Notion with open-source code base."
... this dramatically narrows down folks that should be interested in Anytype. There are still many people who dislike SaaS for their data but you play on your strength right from the first message.
Conclusion
You want to narrow down as much as possible because it means you will stop spending your precious time with a lot of people who don’t get what you do and who are actually not ideal users for your product.
If your feedback loop is slow or non-existent, your product roadmap is filled with tangental and not additive requests, if you are burning energy on things chats and explanations that don’t show the value your product is supposed to deliver - then my friend you have most likely failed to narrow down the market.
That means you literally fucked up your chances of success - you made it 10x harder for yourself to succeed. And why?
Just because you were afraid to talk to the smallest possible niche first.
Here’s the thing, it’s called expanding and not niching-down for a reason -> you expand from small to bigger, not the other way around.
Just think about it and do yourself a favor today -> review your focus! Can you narrow it down an inch or more?
Let me know how it went 😃
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