[r0naa]

>3) It turns out that it's harder than it sounds to capture the full value of a smaller market for a bunch of reasons, and so the failure rate is much higher than expected.

What kind of reasons? Direct me to some resources if there are too many to enumerate

[paulsutter]

Primarily because it's hard to pivot in a small market.

When you are in a massive market there are lots of adjacent places to pivot. When you're in a small market, if you miss on the first try, you probably miss completely.

[js4]

Things go wrong in business regardless of market size -team issues, tech issues, funding issues, operational issues etc.

Your probability of success in a small market is going to be marginally better than it is in a bigger market. So if you look at it in terms of expected value, the bigger market is more valuable given the probability of failure.

[dmux]

I'm interested in this as well. Doesn't this go against Rob Walling's advice in "Start Small Stay Small" as well as Peter Thiel's advice in "Zero to One"?

[danenania]

I read Peter Thiel's advice as being more along the lines of finding a small beachhead that you can conquer to get started, then using that as a base to push into a big market.