A Smart Bear
In a post that reminds me of Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma,” entrepreneur Jason Cohen tells would-be entrepreneurs of all kinds that, unlike in politics, the key to a successful startup is to ignore the murky middle ground of your potential audience. “A startup should be the bat-shit crazy independent candidate who runs for president even though he’ll end up with only 40,000 votes,” Cohen writes. “How do you get 40,000 fans, whether Web app customers, blog readers, or book-buyers? By talking to the fringe, not the middle.” He continues:
By taking a hard line on what’s important to you. By having strong opinions, even if weakly held. By being specific, not general, By speaking to your target audience, not to just anyone who happens by your website. By taking the smallest, most well-defined niche you can muster and owning it 100%.
… A strong, clear message of any sort beats a muddled, generic message attempting to appeal to the masses.
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