Hi Everyone,

I recently started a little company with a couple of guys. Ours is the typical startup, a lot of ideas, dreams, talent and work hours :P.

Our initial business plan was to develop a DM (Document Manager) with several features found on DropBox and other tools but with a big differentiator. Then we got in the team this Business Guy (I must say that several of us could be called 'Business Guys' but we are mainly hackers, he is just Another 'Networking Guy'), and along with him came this market analysis for a DM aimed at a very specific and narrow niche. We have many elements to believe in his market study and the idea is the classic "The market is X million, so if we grab a 10%...", and the market is really there to grab because all big providers deemed it too little and fled, let's say that the market is 5 million USD and demand very specific features.

If we decide to go for this niche product we face a sales cycle of about 7 months, and the main goal of these revenue is to develop more ambitious projects. (Institutional VC is out of the question if you want to keep a marginal ownership of your company in my country). The only overlap between the niche and the mass market product features is the ability to store documents; everything else requires that we focus all of our efforts towards one or the other.

I've studied a lot about the differences between Mass and Niche Markets, but I want to hear from people with actual experience. So everything comes down to this: If you have a really “saleable” idea what is the right thing to do: to go for the niche or go for the big prize and target primarily the mass market?

Thanks for your input