Market Density Over Size
PayPal's early misstep with PalmPilot money transfers taught a valuable lesson: small, concentrated markets trump large, dispersed ones. Co-founder Peter Thiel reveals how shifting focus to eBay's PowerSellers led to rapid success. Within three months, PayPal served 25% of these high-volume users. Thiel's insight? "The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors." This principle guided PayPal from a struggling startup to a fintech giant, proving that sometimes, smaller is indeed better.