Identify your Startup's Target Market

"Entrepreneurs don't have the luxury of resources. Take your resources and apply them to a narrow, carefully defined target market that you can dominate." - Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet

Some of the world’s largest companies started with a niche focus on their target customer. Jeff Bezos began with an initial focus on online book sales, Mark Zuckerberg initially launched Facebook for Harvard students only and Elon Musk’s initial focus for Tesla was premium electric sports cars in California.

Identifying your target customer starts with market segmentation to identify potential market opportunities and your end user.

Then, we conduct primary market research for our most promising market segments. Primary market research is essentially the process of directly interacting with users to understand their challenges and key priorities.

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How MIT defines innovation

Trish Cotter

Trish Cotter from the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship introduces herself and explains how MIT views innovation.

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Introduction to Disciplined Entrepreneurship

Trish Cotter

Introduction to ‘Disciplined Entrepreneurship’, its key themes and benefits of the approach.

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Why should you start with the end user?

Trish Cotter

Trish Cotter summarizes market segmentation and primary market research as a process to identify a specific market.

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Is Your Startup Idea viable? Start with Primary Market Research

Trish Cotter

Trish Cotter guides social entrepreneurs in conducting primary market research and answers questions such as:

Why is it important to start with open-ended questions to understand the customer’s pain points?

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What makes a good persona?

Trish Cotter

A good persona includes the user’s demographics and psychographics, and showcases their story, typical week, goals, pain points, information search process, objections to existing solutions and type of experience desired.

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Select your target problem using 'Sprint' and 'Disciplined Entrepreneurship'

Suraj Kripalani

Selecting your target problem using ‘Sprint by Jake Knapp with John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz’ and ‘Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup by Bill Aulet.’