MVS (Minimum Viable Segment)
Minimum Viable Segment is the smallest group of customers you can serve profitably while achieving product-market fit. Narrower focus than TAM.
What Is a Minimum Viable Segment? Finding Your MVS
Example: instead of targeting all e-commerce (too broad), focus on Shopify stores doing $1M-$10M annually selling physical goods in the US. This MVS is large enough to build a business but narrow enough to deeply understand needs. Benefits: clearer positioning, easier to dominate, faster word-of-mouth, better product decisions. Expand to adjacent segments after dominating MVS.
Examples
Instead of targeting every small business in the US, a payroll startup narrows its MVS to restaurants with 10 to 50 employees in three states. That segment is small enough to understand deeply and win through word of mouth, but large enough to sustain a real business before expanding further.