The Business Engineer

The Business Engineer

Niche Strategy!

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Gennaro Cuofano's avatar
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Gennaro Cuofano
May 30, 2024
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​Tesla was not the first to try to build a successful EV vehicle.
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In the mid-late 1990s, General Motors built a car called EV1.

EV1A014 (1) cropped.jpg

Source: RightBrainPhotography (Rick Rowen) derivative work

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The car was supposed to target a more significant segment of the car market.
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This made sense for General Motors because, as an established automaker, it made sense to investigate the development of an electric vehicle only if this would target a large market.
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Yet, this turned out to be a complete failure.

That's the core difference between a startup and an incumbent.
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When launching new products, an incumbent like General Motors tries to go after large market segments right on (targeting the late majority).
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A startup with constrained resources must do the opposite.
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A company like Tesla, with limited funding, had to figure out how to niche down the market as much as possible to showcase the technology without going bankrupt.
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To Tesla in the early days, it didn't matter how small it was the niche it was going to tackle.
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What mattered was the ability to showcase the technology at first.
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This is a core difference, as whereas new entrants develop markets by starting from tiny niches, incumbents try to launch markets by starting from the masses!
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The former approach creates options to scale, where failure is cheap and bearable.

That’s the essence of market expansion theory, which is critical to developing any tech business model.
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The latter creates a scenario where failure gets so expensive that if the product doesn't reach the masses, it will be withdrawn, and progress will be stopped for years!

tesla-innovators-roadster

Therefore, Tesla used the Roadster as a gateway to the car industry, targeting a tiny market segment of innovators who supported Tesla's mission.

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