Core Market

There comes a time in the life cycle of a failing product where the progenitors, in spite of their best intentions to develop a strong set of features the customer wants, find themselves scratching their heads asking the million-dollar question: “Why won’t you come?”

“Look at all these features. Now, why won’t you use them?”

There’s a misconception in product development that the feature makes the market. Most entrepreneurs — myself included — invent products that solve problems. Therefore the market for any given product is loosely defined as anyone with that problem in the area I can ship that product to. Looked at another way, products developed in this way have features that address the market that desires these features. Nice work if you can find a large market with a hitherto unmet needed solution. Good luck!

Looked at that way, it’s easy to see that  features make a market no more than a market makes features. The key is to find a small market with a small unmet need their willing to pay for a good solution to. This small market is a core market. The produces of a product with a core market doesn’t just say, “I know who I serve best,” but more importantly says, “I know who not to serve.”

Core value

At the heart of understanding how features and markets are loosely coupled is the concept of core value. Core value is a term that gets thrown out a lot in meetings with investors. Investors want entrepreneurs to distill their vision into a single core value. There’s logic in this thought experiment. It’s a values statement for the proposed company where the investor sizes up the entrepreneur’s intent. By the same token, the entrepreneur uses a core value as a shield from those who would have them stray from essence for being in business: adding value at a fair price.

Having a core value is not a vision statement but well articulated a Core Value does serve as a kind of corporate mantra. It helps the entrepreneur make decisions and serves as a touchstone for so much of the trial and error learning involved in both developing the product and articulating the market for that product.

A product with a core value says, “I know what I do best.”