When I ask founders who their customer is, the most common answer is some version of "everyone." Small businesses. Professionals. People who want to be more productive. Anyone who uses the internet.

This is always wrong. Not because these aren't real categories of people. But because "everyone" is not a marketing strategy. It's the absence of one.

When your customer is everyone, your message is for no one. You can't write a compelling headline for "everyone." You can't choose where to advertise if your audience is "anyone." You can't build features that delight "people in general." Every decision becomes a compromise, and compromises don't excite people.

The counterintuitive thing about narrowing your audience is that it usually increases your total market. Sounds wrong, but it's not. When you focus on a specific customer, you can build exactly what they need, market exactly where they are, and speak in language that resonates with them. You win that niche. And then the niche expands.

Facebook started with Harvard students. Just Harvard. Not college students in general, not young people, not "anyone who wants to connect." Harvard students only. They won Harvard. Then they expanded to other Ivies. Then all colleges. Then everyone. But they started with a group small enough to dominate completely.

Amazon started with books. Just books. Not "everything." Books. They became the best place to buy books online. Then they expanded to music, then electronics, then everything. But they started with a niche small enough to own.

The pattern is always the same: start narrow, win completely, expand from a position of strength. This is positioning in action. The companies that try to start broad almost always lose. Because they can't be the best at anything if they're trying to be adequate at everything.

Here's the practical exercise: describe your ideal customer in enough detail that you could find them in a room. Not "marketing managers" — that's still too broad. "Marketing managers at B2B SaaS companies with 50-200 employees who currently use spreadsheets to track their campaigns." Now you know where to find them (SaaS conferences, specific LinkedIn groups, certain podcasts), what to say to them (you're still using spreadsheets?), and what to build for them.

You're not excluding everyone else forever. You're choosing where to start. There's a difference between "we don't serve these people" and "we don't serve these people yet." The second is a strategy. The first is just laziness in the other direction.

Pick your smallest viable audience. Serve them better than anyone else possibly could. Let them pull you into the broader market. That's how growth actually works.