Market Segmentation

Who this is for

Founders whose product could plausibly serve several kinds of customer, and who are therefore serving none of them particularly well.

What you'll actually decide

Which segment you go after first and why that one is the beachhead — reachable, urgent, and able to refer you into the next one.

What first-time founders get wrong here

Picking the biggest segment rather than the most reachable one. A beachhead's job is to be winnable and to lead somewhere; "everyone who has this problem" is not a segment, it's the absence of a decision.

The first 10 questions

This is where the conversation starts. Each answer shapes what gets asked next.

1. 01What does your product or company do, and who broadly might benefit from it?
2. 02List every type of person or organization you could imagine as a customer — don't filter yet.
3. 03What have you already tried, if anything, to find early customers? What happened?
4. 04What constraints define your go-to-market reality — geography, language, existing relationships, budget, team size?
5. 05Which of your potential segments has the most acute version of the problem you solve?
6. 06Which segment do you have the best access to — real relationships, domain knowledge, or standing in a community?
7. 07What does the decision-making process look like across segments — who decides, how long, and what does it cost to acquire?
8. 08Where is the most defensible beachhead — the segment where, if you win, it's hardest for a competitor to displace you?
9. 09What would make this the wrong segment to start with?
10. 10Which segment are you choosing as your primary focus, and what's the one-sentence rationale?

+ 7 more questions across discovery, validation, and the creative brief — each one adapting to what you've already said.

Related business planning project types

• Which Idea Do I Pursue?Choose which of your ideas deserves the next year of your life — founder fit, reachable customers, and honest excitement, compared side by side.
• Quit Your Job or Nights-and-Weekends?Decide whether to go all-in on your startup or build it nights-and-weekends — what the leap actually costs, what staying actually costs, and what would have to be true either way.
• Solo or Cofounder?Decide whether to build alone or bring on a cofounder — what you actually need, what half your company costs, and what the right plan looks like either way.