There is a constant struggle founders in my FundraisingCOUP program are expressing when it comes to the market they are addressing:

They are starting in a niche – by addressing a specific customer (sub-)segment and focusing on solving one specific problem. We’ll call this the „beachhead niche“, a common term, especially in the US. But these founders have a much bigger vision than just their beachhead.

Many founders find it highly challenging to tell a compelling story that makes VCs excited about the future potential while expressing why it’s smart to start in a beachhead niche.

But let’s zoom out first

A huge market is attractive for VCs, but if your pitch story is solely focused on the big market and opportunity, VCs will get nervous as chances are very low you’ll be successful by addressing a huge market and customer segment without a clear and intelligent focus.

Showing that you’re starting with a thoughtful, focused approach in a beachhead market, serving a niche of customers, and providing a small solution for an urgent problem will increase VCs’ trust in you and your Go-to-Market strategy.

On the other hand, not stressing clearly how much bigger the long-term opportunity is can turn off many VCs quickly, as they would find your beachhead niche too small to generate venture returns.

Magic happens when you’re able to tell a story that combines both:

Show (A) a brilliant beachhead niche approach for the start of your journey, present (B) the bigger vision and opportunity in the long term, and then connect both – show the path to getting from (A) to (B).

Told right, our reptilian brains will love this story as it’s your chance to work with contrast in storytelling:

The contrast between (A) how you start in a tangible niche vs. (B) your big vision is a great story.

There are three main ways to tell that „from (A) to (B)“ story:

1. Leading with the Big Vision

In the following visuals, the big green circle symbolizes your big vision, while the small yellow circle stands for your beachhead niche:

In this option, you start with the big vision and end with the beachhead.

You present all the problems you’ll solve in your long-term vision;

you show all the solutions and product details to solve all the problems you will tackle in the long term.

You explain the overall market that you’ll address in your long-term strategy.

And only then, you zoom in and say:

„All right, this is our vision, but we know we must start with a clear focus. Thus, we’ll focus on (niche target group) and (narrow solution value proposition). The market for this beachhead niche looks like this: (…).“

The advantage of this approach is that you focus on the big, attractive vision.

The disadvantage is that you focus on the big, attractive vision :) Means: The risk is that you lose VCs quickly as the big vision seems too superficial, not tangible enough, and impossible to achieve because they miss the steps in between. Only towards the end would you resolve it and explain your beachhead approach – perhaps too late.

This approach works best when your beachhead niche and big vision are close. The more significant the gap between the two, the bigger the challenge to compellingly telling this story.

A usual problem when your vision is fundamentally bigger than your beachhead approach:

Right at the beginning, you’d need to explain all the problems you’re tackling.

And when you do that, you’re forced to explain in the following how you solve all these problems.

This is often a pure information overload and leads to everything other than a short and crispy story.

2. Leading with the Beachhead Niche

In this option, you’re doing it exactly the way around:

You start with your beachhead niche. You introduce only the problems you’re tackling in your beachhead niche stage. You then only present the solutions to those problems; in other words, your product is in your first go-to-market stage. Then, introduce the bigger vision, for example, with a market slide showing how you’ll expand your TAM over time.

When I see pitch stories that do an excellent job of telling a compelling story from the beachhead niche to the big vision, they mostly go for this approach. It’s the easiest way to tell the story as you focus entirely on the beachhead niche and only show your path to your bigger vision at the end. That makes it much easier to understand your beachhead approach and make your Go-to-Market strategy very tangible.

3. Closing the Loop

This is an interesting one that can lead to a great story:

You start with the big vision. You show all the problems you’re going to solve in the future.

But then you focus right from the beginning by saying:

„In our first phase, we’ll have a narrow Go-to-Market by focusing on tackling (1-2 problems from your list of all problems).“

Then, you only present your solution for your beachhead niche.

After that, you explain the market for your beachhead niche – and close the loop by showing how you’ll expand your Go-to-Market and TAM by tackling all the other problems you introduced at the beginning.

Which is best for you? It depends. It depends on your specific strategy, beachhead niche, and bigger vision.

Try all three approaches (at least on the whiteboard), compare them, test them with smart people, and choose the story option that seems to work best for your specific case.