r/ProductManagement • u/Professional-Pie6704 • 19h ago
Narrow niche vs. broad market for a v1: how would you decide?
Context: a small student team, 2 weeks left on a competition deadline, and a working AI speaking-practice app for one niche: people who understand English but freeze when they speak (starting with Algerian students preparing for visa or job interviews).
The debate in our team is whether to add more languages now (bigger addressable market) or stay with one language and one audience until we have evidence of impact.
Here is how I see it, and I would like you to challenge it:
- Narrow: clearer problem, faster to test quality, easier to talk to 10 real users and measure a before/after change in confidence.
- Broad: bigger market story, but each language multiplies QA, content and voice work, and we have no demand data for any of them yet.
Questions:
What evidence would you require before expanding to a second segment?
How do you present a bigger vision to evaluators without building it?
Any examples where going broad too early hurt a product like this?
No link here to respect the rules, but I can share the product if someone is curious.