Don’t feel bad when someone tells you your startup serves “just a niche.” It’s actually a compliment.
Everything is a niche of a niche…of a niche.
This is an old put-down in startup-land, especially from institutional investors searching for blockbuster wins.
And new founders have always struggled to tell the world that they have a clear focus and don’t serve “everyone.”
There is no company that serves everyone, even when it becomes huge and monopolistic.
Even Amazon, Walmart, Google, Taylor Swift, or McDonald’s don’t serve everyone now that they are massive.
And when they started, they each just served a narrow slice of some specific market.
Walmart started in the niche of discount department stores, which is a niche of all stores, which is a niche of all the ways just we Americans buy things. And they didn’t start out everywhere, they started in Arkansas and Missouri–just in towns that were too small for a Sears or a Kmart.
They expanded their niche of what a discount department store is over time; they expanded from Arkansas to small towns in the Southern US, etc.
Walmart is the largest employer in the US, but it isn’t everything to everyone. It’s still a niche of a niche of a niche. And it’s a pretty big niche too.
Serving a niche says you know who your real customers are–and aren’t. That’s a requirement for success in any business.
If someone uses a niche against you, they are probably telling you they have no idea how big your non-obvious niche is.
Or they may be VCs who tell you your market is too small for them to invest big VC funding in your business. But even VCs know most niches are huge enough.
Taylor Swift sells out stadiums around the world and creates a Super Bowl-sized economic impact in every city she visits. But as big and successful as she is, she only serves a specific audience in a specific genre of music, which is a specific genre of entertainment, which is a specific way we spend our time and money.
Everything big is still a niche of a niche of a niche.
So when someone says, “Isn’t that just a niche?” you can either smile at their ignorance or tell them, “Yes, thank you. I’m glad you noticed.”
What niche of a niche of a niche does your business serve?
