Watch this interview
George and Jeroen discuss why it’s important to narrow your focus to a specific customer segment – the niche.
PRO TIP: click below to download an AUDIO ONLY version so that you can listen on the go!
2) Read this content
Starting a startup is really hard. You can’t help everyone. The most common strategy is to only help 1 very specific group of people, your super specific niche, also called beachhead market or initial market segment.
Simply put, who will be your first 10 to 50 customers?
- What is a beachhead market?
- How to slice up your market?
- Start small to win big, a case study on the steamengine
- How to validate your beachhead market with experiments?
Time required: 30-45 minutes, depending on your reading speed
“It’s better to have 50 people love your product than 10.000 kinda like it”
3) Do these exercises
First, add Lesson 4 slides to your Journey Scrapbook
This exercise builds on the previous lesson. We are going to refine what we’ve defined. Oscar Wilde says: To define is to limit, so don’t be scared if you leave out some people. Note: if you haven’t tried to speak to any potential customers yet, this exercise will not do a lot for you. It helps to revisit Lesson 3 – Customer Problems & Jobs to be Done . Good luck!
Which of the potential customer segments of the last lesson have you tried to speak to?
Not being able to speak to a particular segment is a red flag for a segment. This might show you don’t have access to that particular segment. Not a bad thing per se, but you can’t sell to people you can’t speak to.
Did you speak to people with high problem urgency?
This is where the potential customer talks comes in. Remember the customer-problem-fit levels. How many 3s, 4s and 5s did you speak to? If you didn’t speak to anly 3-4-5, you might need to try again.
Which type of person had the highest problem urgency?
It helps to ask yourself: Why is this a problem for this person? What are the unwanted consequences of this problem? Is this person likely to buy you?
On those with high problem urgency, could you try to speak to five more people like them?
This will help to validate if your beachhead market, your initial customer segment, your super specific niche, was not a fluke.
Ask yourself: if you were to make a bet on which group of people you could easily make 10 sales, based on your talks and gut feel, who would that be?
This is what your beachhead should feel like: it’s easiest to start there. What is your Tesla Roadster?