Time and time again, I hear the startup advice... something along the lines of "don't build a product and find a market" but "find a market and build them a product".

I didn't follow that advice.

Well, I sort of did. I picked bloggers or people that run sites similar to Starter Story. But that market ended up being way too small, and way too early.

So I thought picking a userbase would be enough, Gmail users - because Pigeon is a Gmail CRM. That does give it a lot of leverage, as 1.5B people use Gmail.

But I didn't choose a market. And it's biting me in the ass right now. Churn is high and I'm building something for too many people.

Why didn't I do this?

The good news is that it's not too late.

As I continue to have the realization that I've been doing it wrong, I can work to change things.

How? Start looking for markets.

Now that I'm close to being done with the Google audit, the world is my oyster. I've built a great product and now I just need to find the best users for it. I can still keep the use case wide, because it's so flexible, but I can now pick and choose who I should go for, as long as I can plan it right.

Over the last hour, I created this spreadsheet:

Across the columns are questions, which can be answered on a scale of 1-10. Along the rows are different use cases and potential customers.

I've been scouring the Chrome store reviews for Streak to populate the rows. Total up the scores and maybe that can determine was use cases I should go for.

Once I know that, from a distribution side of things, I have some confidence that I can reach those people (with proper planning). I got Starter Story to 100K+ visitors, I think I can figure out some of the marketing stuff.

I'm excited about the future. Time to find customers that really need this tool.

(this spreadsheet/idea is a work in progress - I'll keep this updated on how it goes)