When building your first go-to-market strategy, focus on the market segment that's Solution Aware.

You’re familiar with the five stages of awareness…

1. Problem Unaware: I don’t know a raccoon pooped in my attic
2. Problem aware: I discovered the poop and am bracing myself to go pick it up
3. Solution Aware: My wife tells me there are people who come pick it up for you
4. Product Aware: We start comparing pest waste removers
5. Most Aware: We call the most promising option

If I’m a new pest waste remover trying to get my business off the ground, I need to focus on getting clients today.

Rather than trying to convince people they need to go up in the attic to check for feces, I’d like to reach the people who…

• Already found the poop (Problem Aware)
• Know it's a problem that can be solved (Solution Aware)

This group makes up my SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market).

My TAM (Total Addressable Market) is anyone with an attic (I.e. Problem Unaware & beyond)

But I can not realistically obtain them as clients as an early stage startup.

Why?

• Because my time and money are finite, and my runway is rapidly dwindling

To successfully reach my entire TAM would require massive amounts of money and marketing effort.

I could go to investors and tell them a story about reaching a massive TAM (“There are 100 million attics in America! It’s a gold rush!”)

But I still need to close clients today.

• Which means focusing all my efforts on the group that knows they have a problem and are actively seeking a solution (I.e. Solution Aware)