Hacker News Reader

Primarily because it's hard to pivot in a small market.

When you are in a massive market there are lots of adjacent places to pivot. When you're in a small market, if you miss on the first try, you probably miss completely.

Things go wrong in business regardless of market size -team issues, tech issues, funding issues, operational issues etc.

Your probability of success in a small market is going to be marginally better than it is in a bigger market. So if you look at it in terms of expected value, the bigger market is more valuable given the probability of failure.

I'm interested in this as well. Doesn't this go against Rob Walling's advice in "Start Small Stay Small" as well as Peter Thiel's advice in "Zero to One"?

I read Peter Thiel's advice as being more along the lines of finding a small beachhead that you can conquer to get started, then using that as a base to push into a big market.