In a pitch presentation, the presenter said:

If we can only get 1% of the $4 billion market, we have a $40 million business.

But you won’t. Nobody ever gets the small percentage of the large market. I hate those tops-down market projections.

What happens instead, I think, is that markets are like organisms that are constantly growing and then dividing themselves into smaller markets. Think of how many different kinds of computers there are, or automobiles, or restaurants … every market seems to have started as a piece that was sliced off of a bigger market.

And I love that way of thinking about markets. Successful companies create new markets.  Then competition, the copycats, jump in, and successful companies either fend them off, deal with it, or create yet another new market.

Don’t aim for a tiny piece of a huge market. Create your own new market. Divide and conquer.

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