It's Time To Serve Hyper-Specific Markets, Not Amorphous Crowds
The secret to explosive growth in agriculture...
Agriculture doesn't need more minimally viable products. We need more companies to start serving minimally viable markets.
This is what legendary investor Mike Maples, Jr calls "being an alligator in a puddle" instead of just a big fish in a small pond.
In other words, your approach to your target customer needs to be hyper-specific so that you can monopolize the mindshare of your true believers to drive exponential organic growth.
Too many agriculture companies target enormous, amorphous markets. They say things like, "We serve farmers, retailers, co-ops, independent agronomists, food companies, beverage companies, fuel companies, and textile manufacturers."
Then we all sit around and wonder why agtech hasn't created the value we expected…or why retailers and dealers are watching their margins and influence simultaneously erode…
Some people say this is because farmers are slow to adopt technology and new ways of doing things - maybe they're even a little backward for the modern world.
But I believe that the value creation problem in agriculture today is due to the fact that we are creating products for everyone in general and no one in particular. We serve segments instead of supporters. We generalize to personas instead of focusing on people.
When you build for the mass market, you miss serving the people who will help you achieve your growth goals. When you serve specific customers, you have the opportunity to grow to be massive. We need to remember that the target is not the market. The target is our initial toe-hold - the group of people who will evangelize your solution to the rest of the world.
Consider these examples:
Tim Ferriss wrote "The 4-Hour Workweek" for two friends, and it sold more than 4 million copies.
PayPal's focus on online transactions began with one email from an eBay user. Last year, they made more than $30B.
The Airbnb founders took pictures of their early customer's homes. Now, the company is worth $92B.
We need to get real about who we actually serve. We need to do things that don't scale.
You want to create a product for a certain type of customer? Write their names on a sheet, go out, and visit their businesses.
Do you want to create a message that resonates? Try it out on a prospect and see if their eyes light up.
Get past the board decks, pitches, spreadsheets, and models—those are all representations of reality. Be different, get real, and grow by building for people again.