“Small Businesses” Is Not a Market

When I began building Kashi, I described the target customer as a small business.

It sounded specific enough.

Small businesses needed to manage sales, inventory, customers, quotes, credit, and reports. A platform that combined those workflows could help them operate more efficiently.

The category also seemed enormous. There were small businesses everywhere.

That was exactly the problem.

“Small businesses” was not a market. It was a label covering thousands of different workflows, priorities, and buying behaviors.

Similar size does not mean similar needs

Consider a flower shop, a hardware store, a café, a pet grooming business, and a grocery store.

They may have a similar number of employees.

They may operate from a single location.

They may all accept payments and track customers.

But their businesses behave differently.

A flower shop may care about custom orders, delivery dates, seasonal demand, and perishable inventory.

A hardware store may manage thousands of SKUs, supplier relationships, and frequent price changes.

A café may prioritize speed, modifiers, kitchen operations, and daily cash reconciliation.

A pet grooming business may care more about appointments, customer history, reminders, and recurring visits.

A grocery store may need barcode scanning, rapid checkout, and detailed inventory control.

Calling all of them small businesses hides the differences that determine whether software is useful.

A broad audience creates vague messaging

When a product serves everyone, the landing page becomes difficult to write.

I could say:

“Manage your sales, inventory, customers, and business from one place.”

That statement was accurate.

It was also generic.

It did not describe a painful moment.

It did not tell a flower shop how the product would help during Valentine’s Day.

It did not tell a hardware store how it would prevent stockouts.

It did not tell a grooming business how it would bring customers back.

Broad positioning describes software.

Narrow positioning describes the user’s life.

The narrower message may reach fewer people, but the right people are more likely to recognize themselves.

A broad market also complicates the product

Different business categories ask for different features.

One customer needs appointments.

Another needs barcode scanning.

Another needs delivery routes.

Another needs product variants.

Another needs employee commissions.

Another needs recurring billing.

If the product tries to satisfy all of them, the roadmap expands quickly.

Every request sounds reasonable because it solves a real business problem.

But the combined result can become a generic platform with many features and no exceptional workflow.

A focused product has an advantage.

It can understand the terminology, habits, and edge cases of a particular business.

It can ship templates rather than blank screens.

It can create onboarding that assumes the user’s goal.

It can become more valuable without becoming more complicated.

Distribution becomes easier when the user is specific

A broad market was also difficult to reach.

Where do “small business owners” spend time?

Everywhere.

A hardware store owner may participate in supplier groups.

A florist may follow wedding and event communities.

A café owner may attend local hospitality events.

A grooming business may belong to pet-industry Facebook groups.

The more specific the customer, the easier it becomes to find communities, partnerships, search terms, and content topics.

A narrow market does not only improve the product.

It improves distribution.

You can write an article for a florist.

You can create a demo using a flower shop’s real workflow.

You can partner with a supplier in that industry.

You can use the language customers already use.

Specificity creates relevance.

I was afraid of choosing too small a niche

Part of the reason I chose a broad audience was fear.

What if I focused on a category that was too small?

What if I built features for florists and later wanted to sell to hardware stores?

What if narrowing the market limited the company?

Those concerns made me optimize for theoretical scale before I had real adoption.

But a product with a narrow audience and strong retention is in a better position than a flexible platform nobody feels strongly about.

Starting narrow does not mean staying narrow forever.

It means earning the right to expand.

A company can begin with one user type, understand that workflow deeply, build a strong reputation, and later move into adjacent markets.

Expansion works better from a position of strength.

How I would choose a market now

Today, I would evaluate a niche using questions such as:

How frequently does the problem occur?

How painful is the current process?

Are businesses already paying for a solution?

Can I reach these users efficiently?

Do businesses in this category share a repeatable workflow?

Does the owner personally feel the problem?

Can the product produce value during the first session?

Would solving one workflow create a natural path to additional features?

I would also spend more time watching businesses operate before deciding what to build.

Not asking, “Would you use this?”

Instead, I would ask them to show me how they handle the task today.

What happens when inventory is wrong?

How do they know what to reorder?

How do they follow up with a customer?

How do they calculate what they earned?

Real behavior is more useful than hypothetical enthusiasm.

The lesson

Large markets are attractive because they make the opportunity appear larger.

But the market described in a pitch deck is not the same as the group of people who will adopt a product.

A useful target market should be small enough to understand.

You should know what the customer does during the day, what tools they use, what language they speak, what frustrates them, and what event makes them search for a solution.

“Small businesses” told me how large the opportunity might be.

It did not tell me what to build, how to explain it, or where to find the first loyal users.

That required a much narrower answer.