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I don't disagree with the OP's basic point about not making "get 1% of huge market" your strategy. As SoftwareMaven points out above, getting 1% of a market is

I don't disagree with the OP's basic point about not making "get 1% of huge market" your strategy. As SoftwareMaven points out above, getting 1% of a market is not a strategy at all, it's a result, and it's not going to happen just because the number sounds small. But I do want to oppose the more general notion that you shouldn't enter crowded markets. A market like CRM is not one big homogenous thing; it's got tons of nooks and crannies in it. Maybe you want to be CRM for bakeries, who, let's just say, are largely not using CRMs yet. You'll end up with a different product, but more importantly, you'll have different sales channels and marketing strategies. You go after an untapped niche with special requirements, maybe even one that's too small for giant CRM firms to target. You compete with all of those giant CRM companies by not competing with them. Will that add up to 1% of the market? Seems doubtful, but ask yourself what percent of $18 billion you can run a company on. It's a lot less than 1%.

jiggy2011 14y ago
It would probably be best to target niches with relatively large companies who have very specific requirements. Over the years I have built about 6 mini CRM systems for small companies. Usually these start off as contact form on a webpage and evolve into something that outputs excel spreadsheets. Over time though, these things tend to get replaced by mass market packaged or SaaS CRM systems simply because even though they are not bespoke to that business they do the job well enough for the price. The answer is probably not to make "A CRM for bakeries" but to make a "system to help with the unique problems of large bakeries that might happen to have CRM-like components" If you want to build a product for a market as opposed to selling consulting by building a system for one specific bakery then the sweet spot is likely to be a very small target area.

jiggy2011 14y ago

It would probably be best to target niches with relatively large companies who have very specific requirements. Over the years I have built about 6 mini CRM systems for small companies. Usually these start off as contact form on a webpage and evolve into something that outputs excel spreadsheets. Over time though, these things tend to get replaced by mass market packaged or SaaS CRM systems simply because even though they are not bespoke to that business they do the job well enough for the price. The answer is probably not to make "A CRM for bakeries" but to make a "system to help with the unique problems of large bakeries that might happen to have CRM-like components" If you want to build a product for a market as opposed to selling consulting by building a system for one specific bakery then the sweet spot is likely to be a very small target area.