Start with broad validation but narrow to a specific niche to achieve product-market fit
Insight from Michael Dubakov
When to use
When you have validated general market interest but are struggling to gain traction or close deals, signaling the need to focus on a specific customer segment with acute pain
Don't do this
Staying too broad for too long, trying to serve everyone and ending up resonating with no one, leading to weak positioning and slow growth
12 Founders Who Did This
Initially served multiple profiles but growth accelerated after focusing on users who genuinely valued intent-based outreach
Long-term client approached with a problem 'that almost every business struggles with - overwhelmed support teams'
Realized he and startup friends all disliked existing form builders, then talked to many competing product users to understand what they wanted differently
Focused on Tier II and III cities in India where young people had aspirations for urban lifestyle products but limited access
Despite being Chinese founders, deliberately targeted US market first because Chinese teens were too academically pressured to develop social media browsing habits
Initially tried to deploy everything (the whole cloud), then narrowed to being the frontend cloud
Niched down progressively from 'videos' to 'short videos for online brands' to 'short videos for B2B SaaS companies' to make ICP obvious
Narrowed from general freelance writing to hyper-specific niche: technical content for software developers, written by practicing engineers
Chose academic writing niche for students and researchers instead of pursuing broader enterprise AI writing market like competitors Jasper and Copy.ai
Started with broad health/wealth/relationships markets, then used AI prompts to drill down from 'stress management' to 'co-parenting' by exploring sub-categories systematically
Launched as broad no-code tool for any company, then analyzed churn patterns across customer segments to discover product teams had 13% annual churn vs much higher elsewhere
Started with broad vision of design for everyone, then narrowed to small business owners, marketers, teachers, and students who lacked design skills