Video · ~14 min

Simple Products That Became Big Companies

Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel · Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel, Y Combinator Free Beginner

Two YC partners explain how products that looked small at launch grew into large markets, which reframes the worry that your addressable market seems tiny today. It shows that markets are often won and then expanded from a narrow start, not sized correctly upfront as a percentage. Watch it to calibrate how much early market size should actually worry you.

  • Many huge companies began serving a market that looked far too small.
  • Winning a narrow segment first is how you earn the right to expand.
  • Judge early ideas by pull from real users, not by a headline market number.
Open on ycombinator.com ↗

The question it answers

  1. How much of the market do I realistically need to capture for this to be a real business?

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