Your New Customer Is Often Hidden Inside Your Competitor’s Customer Base

I recently rewatched an old internal talk by Steve Jobs from his NeXT years. What struck me is how relevant it still is for anyone building a project today — especially if you’re struggling to clearly define your customer.

The core message is simple but powerful: sometimes you don’t discover your real customer by looking at yourself — you discover them by analysing your competitors properly.

In the talk, NeXT originally struggled with positioning. Were they a workstation company? A better personal computer? Something in between? The confusion came from looking at their own product features instead of deeply studying who was actually buying from competitors and why.

When they looked closely at the workstation market leaders, they noticed something interesting: there were actually two different customer groups inside what looked like one big market. Traditional technical users — and a fast-growing professional segment using these machines for business, publishing, finance, education, and database-driven work.

That second segment was under-served. And that’s where NeXT fit perfectly.

This is the practical lesson.

If you want to discover your next customer segment, don’t just define your “ideal customer” on a blank page. Go and reverse-engineer your competitors:

Look at:

who they target in their messaging

who actually buys (case studies, testimonials, LinkedIn profiles)

what complaints users have

what features they ignore

what use cases they don’t talk about

what workflows look hacked together

There is often a gap between who competitors think they serve and who actually gets the most value.

That gap is opportunity.

Talk to their customers if you can. Read reviews. Watch demos. Study their documentation. You’re not copying — you’re mapping the terrain.

I’ve done this process multiple times when changing direction. The breakthrough rarely came from brainstorming. It came from pattern recognition.

Markets are rarely one block. They are layers.

Your next customer might already exist — just not labelled yet.

Full video here > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtnX1EJHbC0

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