Lenny's Podcast / Lenny's Newsletter

Answers How big does my market need to be for this to be a real business? How specific should my target customer be when I'm just starting? What's the difference between an ICP, a buyer persona, and a target market? How do I know if I'm targeting the wrong customer? Should I focus on one customer segment or serve everyone who'll pay? What is a beachhead market and why does everyone say to start with one? How do I pick which niche to go after first? Isn't picking a tiny niche going to limit how big I can get? How do I know when I've won my niche and it's time to expand? How do I find a defensible niche in a market full of big incumbents? How do I estimate a market size when the product I'm building doesn't have a category yet? Everyone says my market is too niche to be venture-scale. When are they right, and when are they wrong? I'm building outside the big startup hubs and my 'market' is the small businesses in my own town. Is that a strength or a limit? I've done 20 interviews and every person described a slightly different problem. How do I know if there's a real pattern or just noise? What's the difference between defining a niche and just being too small to matter? How do I know if I've defined my ICP too narrowly and I'm leaving obvious customers out? How do I define my ideal customer when I'm a domain expert who thinks everyone in my industry needs this? How specific should my ideal customer be for a consumer app versus a B2B tool? My ideal customer can't afford my product. Did I define them wrong? How do I keep my whole team aligned on who our ideal customer is once we start hiring? How narrow is too narrow? I keep slicing my niche smaller and now I'm not sure there are enough buyers left. How do I sell to enterprises and large companies as a tiny unknown startup they have never heard of?

Answers Should I raise venture capital or bootstrap my startup? What do I give up when I take VC money? Is my startup 'default alive' or 'default dead'?