Niches are overrated | Hacker News Reader

Niches are overrated

scottjack.me

78 pointsmemorable34 comments

I'd say, like almost anything, "it's complicated and there are tradeoffs".

Niching improves efficiency. It makes it easier to communicate your value proposition, find clients that are a good fit, makes it easier to get-up-to-speed on new projects, and ensures you can deliver on the projects you take on. If you're ever going to do a "productized service", you kind-of need to have a niche.

On the flip side, niching reduces the total market size of your customers (e.g. can't fulfill requests for mobile apps if you're a WordPress shop), makes it more difficult to transition to other domains if you're trying to get a job (pigeonholing is real), and it's boring to do the same tech or industry forever (personal opinion).

Well said.

If you're well-regarded in your niche, you'll always find work in it. The problems are:

1. You can get bored with it, or sick of the clients.

2. The niche can decline over time, or be too small to support you.

Fortunately, I've always found that in high tech, you can acquire skill in some new area fast enough to get hired in it, without having spent your whole life doing it. If they really want the person who's spent their whole life in it, they'll pick that person, but usually there aren't enough of those to go around.

Depends on what you're optimizing for. This post is about being at the beginning of your freelancing career when you're trying to figure out what's going to keep you going. I found that after 13 years of consulting I finally pick a niche. When I did marketing, sales conversations, and execution became a lot easier, and effective hourly rate skyrocketed.

Picking a niche is smart if you know it'll sustain you on the dimensions that matter (emotionally, financially, intellectually, etc).

I wonder if anyone has niched down not into a vertical, but into a demographic. For example a lot of my clients are religious CEO's. And I'm contemplating just trying to niche into that demographic as opposed to an actual industry or vertical.

I had this experience early on (1998 around) when I accidentally stumbled on a rich client who was very religious and introduced us to his church where almost all men were rich business guys (only ceo's, investors and their families etc). It was a great niche money wise, but as my co-founders and myself were (and are) atheists, we really couldn't work with them as they continuesly mixed religion with business and we cut ties after a few projects.

But it is a good idea I think if you can get into a large (enough) group of a certain demographic that doesn't bite (too much?) with your own beliefs and values.

Think this is a great reinforcement of also requiring a guiding mission to what you do - otherwise it won't feel authentic.

So if your niche is for example custom IT security services for religious, well off business folks, if you don't align and empathize with that niche (e.g., you're an atheist), even if it's a monetary opportunity, you're going to feel dissonance.

At a broader level, this is why I think aligning with your company's mission helps when people can do that vs. taking a more agnostic approach to where you work.

also if you are in one of those demographics it can be even better.

you would have a level of rapport inherently with those people and can make those connections even easier.

Yes agreed. I've seen this work well countless times over the last 15 years in business. Which is what is leading me to do more of it.

> For example a lot of my clients are religious CEO's. And I'm contemplating just trying to niche into that demographic as opposed to an actual industry or vertical.

"as opposed to" doesn't make sense as I don't think you can avoid "an actual industry"

There is definitely sub-differentiation within each industry that cater to religious principals. Look at ESG finance, which has existed and persisted in the pre-modern sense, e.g. plenty of money managers that claim differentiation by investing in firms that screen out obvious vices or work around lending restrictions in the Koran.

Sounds a lot like establishing a lifestyle brand. And yes, it works.

Isn't doing business with people of the same faith a tens of thousands of years old practice? It would be hard to pull this off without embracing similar faiths.

Some say it's the reason religions pop up.

How so? Religious marketing for business services? Or providing a service that religious CEOs need?

I'd be providing a service that religious CEO's need.

Indulgences?

Curious how you ended up with that demographic?

Every successful company. Segmentation, targeting and positioning 101.

Having a niche is a good way to get your first and probably second promotion. Be good at a thing, get promoted to senior person of thing, maybe manager of thing. At this point you don’t want to be a specialist anymore if your goal is promotion. You want to be a generalist and know how things generally should work and be a good communicator. It helps if you are likable. The switch is hard. It is hard to give up what you are good at and hard to get people to see you are good at other things.

> I think the pressure and emphasis on having a niche is unfounded. Especially if you’re in the first few years of your freelancing career and especially if a niche hasn’t made itself apparent to you.

I have found this to be the case. Niches are a hindsight thing a lot of the time. Sometimes it's helpful to hear "stop dealing with problem X since these are a time suck for you", but hearing "find a niche" before you have the problems in front of you isn't all that useful.

I don't know about anyone else, but I have to have a niche, because there is so much to learn. I learn something new, every single day, and I am still barely treading water, in my niche.

A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.

Analog 101 sayings were not nimble enough with technology.

I've worked on projects where wearing a lot of hats was much more of a pleasure than sending a change request.... Waiting.... Getting innacurate results.... Waiting..... Sending another waiting request..... Etc....

We still enjoy 100% analog blocks of time, so much like "squinting to see it" is offensive to asians, IDE references are sure to offend someone :)

I digress......

Is "squinting to see it" really offensive to asians?

All people of all races, epicanthic fold or not, engage the muscles around the eye for various reasons.

Squinting itself, per wikipedia: "helps momentarily improve their eyesight by slightly changing the shape of the eye to make it rounder, which helps light properly reach the fovea"

I've never heard anyone besides you suggest this is offensive? The term is in no way racially derived.

I don't know. If anything, I feel generalism is overrated, at least on places like HN. Maybe I've got very limited viewpoint, but I haven't experienced this sentiment of appreciation towards niches. And in the industry what companies seem to want is mostly fullstack devops people that do everything and can adapt to any tech stack, instead of any particular specialists.

It depends. In a broad stroke sense, small companies often need generalists more than specialists, and big companies are the opposite.

HN, at least historically, leans towards start ups and entrepreneurship. These often (not always) do better starting with some generalists.

Generalism is valuable when you work for a company that has a lot of small needs. Specialism is valuable when the company has a big need for the specialty.

Americans would say -- "Whatever works for you"

Agreed.

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