Market

The whole field of people who could ever want the thing. Large enough to dream on, too large to speak to.

The market is the widest honest circle: everyone whose problem the thing could plausibly solve. Its size is for investors and for courage. It answers whether the field is worth entering; it answers nothing about what to say, because the market as a whole is not listening to anything.

Too large to speak to is a practical statement: messages tuned for the whole field arrive pre-diluted. The market's role in strategy is as the container of choices, of segments, of niches, of positions still unclaimed. You address a market the way you fill a hall, one section at a time.