After writing my post on the Minimum Viable Customer, I stumbled across an excellent article by venture capitalist Michael Skok about finding your Minimum Viable Segment (MVS). Our thoughts are aligned on many points, and it's clear that we've seen many of the same missteps made by startups (which further validates this as a widespread startup issue). The place where we seem to differ substantially is on a key point: the definition of "minimum".

Mr. Skok defines the "minimum" in MVS as "small enough to dominate." Instead, I argue that "minimum" should represent the amount of effort and resources you need to put into winning that customer's engagement so that you can extract a sufficient amount of value catalyst (if you've already read through my detailed example, I think you'll more fully understand what I mean by this).

Dominating a segment can be an extremely valuable outcome for a company to achieve because it can lead to a more impenetrable competitive position, in addition to the marketing benefits of calling yourself a "leader". However, you don't necessarily need to strive for dominance in your very first segment. Your Minimum Viable Customer may just be a steppingstone to a much larger opportunity that you don't have sufficient resources or value catalysts to target yet.

This isn't to say that Mr. Skok doesn't address the concept of choosing a Minimum Viable Segment that you can relatively easily/cheaply target and grow in. He does-it's just not the focus.

On the other hand, Mr. Skok description of the ongoing "dance" between the Minimum Viable Product and the MVS is valuable and enriches my concept of the MVC. If you build the smallest MVP necessary to win over an MVC, you have the opportunity to minimize the resources used for both your initial product development and your initial customer acquisition. The detailed example I give in the supplement is of a company that has built a product and is now trying to find the optimal customer at that time, which is a common problem we see at ValueStream. But this is reactionary, and being proactive by building a product specifically for your Minimum Viable Customer is a superior strategy.

In any case, the concept of the MVC and the MVS overlap on important points, and since I'm not trying to win a Nobel Prize with this framework, I encourage you to also gain some knowledge from Mr. Skok's work here.