Be unmissable to someone.

I spent a morning this week with founders in Malaysia, and we kept circling the same truth. Most founders think their job is to be wanted by everyone. It’s the opposite. Your job is to be unmissable to someone, and a polite no to everyone else.

You don’t pick your customer. You notice which customers are picking you, then you find the discipline to drop the rest. And you judge them by what they do, not what they say. “I’d definitely buy that” in a survey is worth nothing. A signature, a renewal, a referral is worth everything.

Speed is the tell. The right fit buys fast, without a six-month internal war. Slow, painful deals are usually a fit problem wearing a process costume. The strongest signal of all is the referral, because if a happy customer can send you someone who looks just like them, you’ve found your someone.

The fear underneath all of this is market size, so name it. A niche is a beachhead, not a prison. A well-aimed message travels. A generic one gets ignored. One founder in the room put it better than I did: “Our product is not for everyone, so we eliminate, one by one.”

So stop trying to be wanted by everyone. Go and be unmissable to someone. The rest of your strategy gets easier the moment you choose.

I wrote the full essay, with the data on why startups fail and the stories behind each of these moves, over on the writing desk: Be unmissable to someone.