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Q: Early startups often start out targeting a niche group but are building the product in a way that it can scale into wider areas (e.g. from targeting people that are teaching themselves to code -> to targeting people that are teaching themselves anything OR from selling books to becoming, well, amazon).

Also, they may start out with one revenue stream. But once the product matures, they are likely to add additional ones, but can’t prove the future ones as for now. So which market should you display in your pitch deck?

A: Yes, you're right. Early stage startups often start by targeting a particular niche audience and then they move and scale into other areas. Hubspot is a great example of this.

They started out targeting small business owners specifically around things like SEO. But fast forward to today, their products are largely targeted at enterprises. They do email marketing, lead gen, sales pipelines, etc. They’ve expanded their offerings along with their audience as they grew.

For early startups, you don’t have many resources. So it’s really important to go after a specific niche. The more targeted and specific the niche, the better it’ll be.

At the same time, you need to have some vision of expansion because investors want to understand how this can become a big opportunity like Hubspot.

The best way to display this in a pitch deck is through three circles that describe your different markets. For Hubspot, it can look something like

1. Small market: SMB SEO tool
2. Medium market: SMB marketing automation
3. Large market: Enterprise marketing automation

This shows investors the initial market you’re in now and what your plan for growth may look like in the future.