── ── Strategy
Minimum Viable Audience — Win a Small Specific Group First
The Minimum Viable Audience (Seth Godin) is the smallest group of people whose problem you can solve so well they tell others — the deliberate opposite of appealing to everyone. Specificity is the strategy: a tight audience lets you make something remarkable, and remarkable travels. Trying to serve everyone produces something no one loves.
Run Minimum Viable Audience — Win a Small Specific Group First on a real problem
Bring something you're actually deciding — free, in the browser.
How it works
1. Name a specific person, not a demographic — worldview, where they gather, what they already believe. 2. Size the smallest audience that sustains you (revenue ÷ per-customer value = the number you actually need). Gate: if the number is "millions to survive," the model, not the audience, is the problem. 3. Make something they'd miss if it vanished — remarkable to them, not to the average person. 4. Show up where they already are; earn attention by being the best answer for that group. 5. Engineer word-of-mouth: give them a reason and the language to tell peers. Gate: if it isn't share-worthy to this group, tighten the audience or the offer. 6. Expand only after saturation — adjacent audiences, once the core loves it.
When to use it
- a founder wants to appeal to everyone
- 'our market is huge / everyone is a customer', picking a beachhead, a creator/SMB choosing a niche
- 'who exactly is this for?'
When not to use it
the business genuinely requires mass-market scale from day one and a niche is proven irrelevant.
Worked example
Minimum Viable Audience — Win a Small Specific Group First
The Minimum Viable Audience (Seth Godin) is the smallest group of people whose problem you can solve so well they tell others — the deliberate opposite of appealing to everyone. Specificity is the strategy: a tight audience lets you make something remarkable, and remarkable travels. Trying to serve everyone produces something no one loves.
Install this skill (free, MIT)
npx skills add deciqAI/knowledge-skillsUseful? Star the repo — stars help other builders find it.
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