Startup founders are taught to dream big – to aim for the sky, especially in terms of their addressable market.

While that may be true in the long term, in the short term, there is another approach that works.

​Lenny Rachitsky, a product management expert, offers a counter-intuitive idea: to aim for a very narrow, super-specific audience.

In doing so, Lenny is using the power of surprise – offering a point of view that runs counter to established ideas.

He then uses another storytelling principle: ‘Show don’t just tell’, when he offers several examples of what he means by a very narrow audience.

He doesn’t stop there. He gives another example in which he again uses the power of contrast – in sharing good and bad examples of defining your audience.

A final point – in using highly successful startups as his example, he is also building credibility in his idea.

#SOTD 97