<aside> 💡
Most early-stage founders make the same mistake: they target everyone who could buy their product, and end up with a go-to-market strategy that resonates with no one. Segmentation is not about dividing your market into tidy boxes. It is about making a deliberate, defensible choice about where to focus — and being honest about where you have a genuine right to win versus where you are simply hoping the product sells itself. The founders who get this right early do not find the biggest segment. They find the segment where the pain is sharpest, the alternatives are weakest, and their specific product has an unfair advantage. That focus compounds. It produces reference customers, repeatable sales motion, and word-of-mouth in a concentrated market — all of which are impossible to build when you are spread thin across five different buyer types with five different problems. This model will force you to get specific. You will identify every plausible customer segment, then stress-test each one against the criteria that actually predict where early revenue comes from. By the end you will have a primary target segment you can defend — not because it is the largest, but because it is the one where you are most likely to win.
</aside>
Who could buy this product?
Before you evaluate, you need to generate. The most common segmentation failure is not poor evaluation — it is a list that was too narrow to begin with, usually because the founder only mapped segments they were already comfortable with.
Cast wide here. Include segments that feel obvious, segments that feel unlikely, and segments you have not yet explored. Vertical industries, company sizes, geographies, functional roles, buying triggers, use cases — any dimension that produces a meaningfully distinct customer type belongs on the list.
You will pressure-test and eliminate in Part 2. Right now, the only mistake you can make is leaving a viable segment off the list.
| Segment Name | Description (one sentence) | Estimated Size | Current Solution | Switching Motivation | Switching Trigger | Reachability |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [e.g. Seed-stage SaaS founders pre-Series A] | [One sentence] | [X potential customers / $X annual spend] | [Specific tool, approach, or workaround] | [General motivation to switch] | [Specific trigger event] | [Channel or method] |
| [Segment 2] | ||||||
| [Segment 3] | ||||||
| [Segment 4] | ||||||
| [Segment 5] | ||||||
| [Segment 6] | ||||||
| [Segment 7 — if applicable] | ||||||
| [Segment 8 — if applicable] | ||||||
<aside> 🤖
JSON Prompt: Segment Identifier Need AI to help you brainstorm potential segments? Copy and paste this prompt into your chosen LLM, making sure you include the inputs highlighted in red font throughout the prompt:
Where should you focus?
Motivation and market size are not the same thing as winnability. This scoring exercise forces you to evaluate each segment against the criteria that actually predict where early revenue comes from — and to surface the trade-offs that gut feel alone will miss.
Score each segment against the six criteria below on a scale of 1–3. Total the scores to identify your highest-priority segments. Two important notes before you start:
On competitive intensity: score this inversely — 3 means low competition (favourable), 1 means high competition (unfavourable). A crowded market with entrenched alternatives should pull a segment's score down, not up.
On weighting: the six criteria are not equally important for every business. If you are entering a market with a genuinely differentiated product, problem severity and willingness to pay matter more than market size. If you are capital-constrained, accessibility may outweigh everything else. Use the total score as a starting point — then apply your judgment to the trade-offs it surfaces.
On SWOT/TOWS: before scoring, review your SWOT analysis from 01.5. If your TOWS WO strategies identified a weakness that prevents you from serving a particular segment effectively, reflect that in a lower Accessibility or Strategic Fit score. If your TOWS SO strategies identified a specific opportunity in a particular segment, reflect that in a higher Problem Severity or Strategic Fit score.
Scoring criteria: