Derek Sivers
from the book “Anything You Want”:

The strength of many little customers

2008-03-11

Many small entrepreneurs think, “If we could just land Apple, Google, or the government as a client, we’d be all set!”

Software companies often do this. They hope to make some technology that a huge company will want to build into every product, or install at every employee’s desk.

But this approach has many problems:

Instead, imagine if you designed your business to have no big clients, just lots of little clients.

So much of the music business is actually the star business — people hoping to catch the coattails of a huge mega-star. But I wanted nothing to do with that, for these same reasons.

When you build your business on serving thousands of customers, not dozens, you don’t have to worry about any one customer leaving or making special demands. If most of your customers love what you do, but one doesn’t, you can just say goodbye and wish him the best, with no hard feelings.