Some of the greatest breakout software companies over the past decade didn't obsess over market size initially. Instead, they identified a few key things.
What they got right
- They saw that how people do something today is not how they'll do it tomorrow — and if that's true, the world will inevitably benefit from the change.
- They didn't over-index on market mapping, personas, and ICP. Instead, they talked to the smartest, best-aligned people at the best-aligned companies for the problem they were solving — people who shared a strong conviction that the concept was inevitable. Most of the time, the size of this "market" was $10M–$50M in potential ARR at best, back then.
- They leaned into compounding earned secrets: qualitative inputs from customer conversations, experts in their networks, and constant feedback validating that the future of their idea and market would grow into something much bigger.
- They found the smartest customers and took their feedback to heart — sometimes prioritizing the needs of a single person, because that person was clearly the trendsetter and the clearest thinker on where the market was headed.
The takeaway
Great companies don't always start in obviously large, high-demand markets. They earn every single dollar by talking to customers and gaining an edge with a go-to-market mindset. They translate those learnings into raising meaningful amounts of capital over time, as the trends they saw early become glaringly evident to everyone else years later.