Minimum Viable Audience

A term from Seth Godin: the smallest group of people you can build for and delight, rather than trying to appeal to everyone from the start.

Why it matters

Serving a small, specific audience deeply is how products earn love and word of mouth, which then spreads. Chasing everyone usually means resonating with no one, so starting narrow is a feature, not a limitation.

For example

A newsletter starts by delighting 1,000 climate-tech founders rather than chasing everyone, and grows through their word of mouth.

Go deeper

The Minimum Viable Audience Seth's Blog · article Godin's short post makes the strongest case for going smaller on purpose: pick the smallest group you can delight completely rather than the largest group you can mildly interest, because delight compounds through word of mouth. It is the emotional counterpart to the math in our short answer, useful when a niche feels uncomfortably small but every person in it would genuinely miss you if you disappeared. Read it as the two minute version of why small can be strategy, not settling. Open seths.blog →

Related terms

Also in Starting Up

See how founders actually handle this on Building the product, part of the Starting Up hub.

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