AI has made building dramatically cheaper.

One person can now research, design, code, write copy, ship, and iterate in a weekend. That is a gift. It is also a trap.

Because when building gets easier, builders start thinking the bottleneck is product. They think if they just ship one more feature, one more landing page, one more AI wrapper, the market will eventually notice.

It usually does not work like that.

The hard part is still what it has always been: finding the right people, understanding the change they want, and making something they care enough to talk about.

I kept pondering on this while reading This is Marketing and then revisiting Seth Godin’s writing on the smallest viable audience and people like us do things like this.

If you are an everyday builder like me, especially now that AI gives you leverage, this matters even more. The internet does not have a shortage of products. It has a shortage of products that feel like they were made for someone in particular.

AI changed the cost of building, not the cost of resonance

AI has made it cheaper to produce code, assets, ideas, and even entire products.

It has not made people care faster.

It has not made trust automatic.

It has not made distribution free.

And it definitely has not made specificity optional.

In fact, the more products that get generated, the more valuable clarity becomes. Generic products are easier to make, which means they are also easier to ignore.

The builder who wins is often not the one with the most features. It is the one who can say, with painful clarity, who this is for and what change it helps them make.

That is why Seth’s framing is so useful. Marketing is not noise. It is not begging strangers for attention. At its best, it is the work of helping the right people see themselves in the change you are offering.

What a minimum viable audience actually is

I like the phrase minimum viable audience because builders immediately understand the spirit of it. Seth Godin usually calls it the smallest viable audience.

Either way, the point is the same.

Your minimum viable audience is the smallest group of people that can sustain your work because they care deeply about the result, understand the story, and want the change badly enough to act.

Seth later described the smallest viable audience as one of the building blocks of traction, permission, distribution, and network effect. That is a useful clue because audience is not just demand. It is the foundation beneath growth.

So when I say audience, I do not mean everyone who could use your product, everyone who follows you, or everyone who likes your posts. I mean the people who instantly get why this exists, the people who would miss it if you stopped, and the people who tell a friend because telling that friend says something true about them.

That last part matters more than builders think. People do not spread products because you worked hard. They spread products because sharing the product helps them express taste, identity, status, or belonging. Seth’s whole “people like us do things like this” frame is really about worldview.

Your best audience is not merely a demographic. It is a group of people who already believe something, already desire something, already fear something, and want a specific kind of progress.

That is why follower count is such a weak signal.

Your follower count is not your audience

A follower is just someone who clicked a button once. An audience is a group of people moving in your direction.

Followers can be stale, curious but uncommitted, there for the wrong topic, or there because the algorithm pushed one lucky post. Audience is different. Audience looks like people who repeatedly pay attention, reply, buy, refer, save, ask questions, and come back.

It looks like people who will move with you from one platform to another and trust you enough to let you into their inbox, calendar, workflow, or budget.

If you have 20,000 followers and only 40 people really care, then your audience is not 20,000. It is 40. That is not bad news. That is clarity, and clarity is worth more than inflated numbers.

Kevin Kelly’s classic essay, 1,000 True Fans, makes a similar point from the creator angle. The lesson was never “you literally need exactly 1,000 people.” The lesson was that depth beats breadth, and direct connection beats vague popularity. A small group of committed people can do far more for a builder than a giant crowd of passive spectators.

So stop asking, “How do I get more followers?” A better question is, “Who are the people who would actually care if I got better at serving them?”

You are looking for people like you, or people who want the same change

This is the part most builders skip. They describe their market at the level of category, not worldview.

They say things like:

• founders
• creators
• developers
• agencies
• small businesses

That is usually too broad to be useful.

A better place to start is with people like you, or people who want the same change you want.

Sometimes your minimum viable audience is literally a former version of yourself: you from 18 months ago, you before you learned the shortcut, you before you found the framework, you when the problem was still expensive, confusing, or embarrassing.

Sometimes it is not your former self, but it is still your tribe in worldview terms. People who work like you. People who care about the same tradeoffs. People who want the same status shift. People who are trying to become the same kind of person.

This is why “what do they believe?” matters so much.

A product for “anyone who wants to be productive” is too vague to travel.

A product for solo consultants who hate bloated project tools and want calm, fast client operations is clearer.

A product for engineers who want boring, dependable infrastructure instead of shiny cloud theater is clearer.

A service for African indie hackers spending too much on infra and trying to simplify without sacrificing DX is clearer.

A product for creators who mean business, want to send invoices, track expenses, and get paid faster is clearer.

A product for writers who want to turn voice notes into publishable essays without losing their voice is clearer.

The sharper the edge, the easier it is for the right people to recognize themselves. And yes, that means some people will not care. Good. If nobody can clearly reject your product, nobody can clearly claim it either.

The worksheet in Seth Godin’s book is the real work

The “Simple Marketing Worksheet” from the back of This is Marketing might be the most practical page in the whole book because it forces you to slow down and answer the questions builders usually try to skip. Not “how do I get more reach?” Not “what growth hack should I copy?” Not “how do I go viral?” The real questions are simpler and harder.

• Who exactly is this for?
• What is it helping them do?
• What worldview do they already bring with them?
• What are they anxious about losing?
• What honest story are you telling?
• What change are you actually trying to create?
• How does success change the way they see themselves?
• How will the early adopters discover this?
• Why would they tell a friend?
• What simple story will that friend hear?
• Is there a built-in network effect or sharing loop?
• What durable asset are you building?
• Are you proud of the thing itself?

That worksheet is useful because it reveals that marketing is upstream of promotion. If you cannot answer those questions, running ads will not save you, posting every day will not save you, and more features will not save you either.

The worksheet also sneaks in something a lot of technical builders ignore: status.

People do not only buy utility. They buy movement, the feeling of becoming someone, the comfort of belonging to the right group, relief from fear, and a story they can tell themselves about who they are becoming.

That does not mean you should manipulate people. It means you should respect the fact that humans rarely buy based on raw functionality alone.

Your AI tool is not just helping someone generate reports. It might be helping them feel organized, current, sharp, modern, or finally in control. Your community is not just a chat room. It might be helping someone feel less alone in a hard craft. Your software is not just saving time. It might be helping a founder look more competent in front of clients or teammates.

When you ignore that layer, you write copy about features. When you understand that layer, you write copy about change.

How to actually find your minimum viable audience

1. Start with the change, not the product

Do not start with “I want to build an AI tool.” Start with the change instead. What becomes better after someone uses this? What frustration disappears? What identity becomes easier to inhabit? What new behavior becomes possible? If the change is blurry, the audience will be blurry too.

2. Describe the audience by worldview, not only by job title

Job title helps, but it is not enough. Two founders with the same title can want entirely different things. Two developers with the same stack can respond to totally different stories. Two creators with the same audience size can have different fears, ambitions, and standards.

Try finishing this sentence: This is for people who believe ________.

That is usually more useful than “This is for marketers” or “This is for founders.”

3. Look for the people who already feel the pain

Early traction usually comes from people who are already searching, already improvising workarounds, already spending money, or already complaining. They do not need to be convinced that the problem exists. They only need to believe that your approach is the one that fits them.

This is also why early adopters matter. Seth often talks about the importance of reaching the people who are open to new solutions. They are not the whole market, but they are the first foothold that gives you language, proof, and momentum.

4. Build a direct line, not just borrowed reach

If your entire audience lives on a rented platform, you do not fully have an audience yet. You have exposure.

A real audience has some form of permission attached to it: an email list, a recurring customer base, a community, a newsletter, a waitlist, a subscription, or a direct message channel people want you to use.

The test is simple: if the platform disappeared tomorrow, could you still reach the people who care most?

If the answer is no, keep building the asset.

5. Measure depth before width

The wrong question is “How many people saw this?”

Better questions:

• Who came back?
• Who replied?
• Who paid?
• Who referred a peer?
• Who described the product better than I did?
• Who got upset when I paused?
• Who is using this in a way that tells me I found a real nerve?

A minimum viable audience reveals itself through behavior, not applause.

6. Make it easy for the right people to tell the right story

Word of mouth is not magic. It is design. If someone likes your product, what do they say to a friend? Can they explain it in one sentence? Does sharing it make them look insightful? Does it help them serve their own circle? Does your product work better when peers join?

The easiest products to spread are often not the loudest ones. They are the ones with the clearest fit.

In the AI era, your edge is not just speed

A lot of builders now have the ability to ship. That means shipping alone is no longer a moat.

Taste matters more. Empathy matters more. Worldview matters more. Distribution matters more. Agency matters more. The ability to see a specific person clearly matters more.

If AI lets everyone build faster, then builders who know exactly who they are serving will compound the fastest. They will write better copy because they know what their audience is afraid of, ship better features because they know which tradeoffs matter, get better referrals because the right users feel seen, and waste less time because they are not trying to please the middle of the curve.

This is the real gift of a minimum viable audience. It gives you focus, language, feedback, and a standard for what to build next. And if you do it well, it gives you something much more valuable than reach. It gives you people who care.

A simple way to pressure-test your idea

Before you ship your next thing, write these three lines:

• This is for people who believe ____.
• They are trying to get from ____ to ____.
• If this works, they will become the kind of person who ____.

If you cannot fill that in clearly, keep working. And if you can fill it in clearly, the next step is not to chase everyone. It is to find the smallest group that lights up when they hear it.

That is your minimum viable audience. Not the people who clap, scroll, or vaguely approve, but the people who feel seen, changed, and proud to bring others with them. That is more than enough to start.