How “market too small” usually means “market too focused”—and why betting on cultural shifts beats following data
Amanda Greeley pitched tennis brand Spence to VCs in 2017 with a simple premise: tennis was about to explode. The response was brutal and consistent: “Tennis isn’t culturally relevant. The total addressable market is too small. It’s not growing.” Wall after wall after wall of rejection.
Today, tennis participation has reached 25.7 million Americans—up nearly 2 million players in the last year alone. The sport has spawned its own social media ecosystem with “tenniscore” aesthetics dominating feeds. What started as investor skepticism became the tennis fever that’s reshaping not just sports apparel, but how we think about identifying cultural momentum before it becomes obvious.
This is a masterclass in recognizing when conventional wisdom kills opportunity and why betting on tomorrow’s mainstream while it’s still today’s niche creates the biggest wins.
Why MBAs Can Fail
VCs rejected tennis in 2017 because they applied traditional market research to a cultural shift they couldn’t quantify. The numbers looked static—tennis participation seemed flat, the demographic appeared narrow, and the market felt mature.
But they measured the wrong market entirely.
Investors evaluated the tennis equipment and apparel market—a seemingly finite group of serious players buying rackets and performance gear. Greeley saw the tennis lifestyle market—a much larger group who wanted to participate in tennis culture without necessarily excelling at the sport.
The difference is exponential. For every person hitting balls at the country club, there are many more who want to wear tennis-coded athleisure year-round. The addressable market wasn’t 5 million serious players; it was 25+ million people who found tennis aspirational.
This pattern destroys opportunities across every industry. Traditional market analysis measures current participation instead of cultural potential. It counts existing customers instead of identifying cultural momentum that will create new customers.
The Culture Shift Signal System
While analysts were rejecting tennis, the cultural signals were everywhere. Social media was beginning to romanticize tennis aesthetics. Celebrity culture was embracing prep-influenced fashion. Athleisure was expanding beyond gym-to-street into lifestyle expression.
The tenniscore movement didn’t emerge overnight—it built gradually through cultural momentum that data couldn’t capture but intuition could recognize.
While VCs were missing the tennis opportunity, established players like Nike, Ralph Lauren, and Lacoste made their own strategic error: they assumed market dominance was permanent.
These heritage brands had owned tennis for decades, but their breadth became their weakness. Nike serves multiple sports, Ralph Lauren dresses multiple lifestyles, Lacoste spans multiple demographics. When culture shifted toward tennis specifically, focused insurgents like Spence and Vuori could move faster and serve the tennis customer better.
What Your Business Can Learn from this Shift.
Question “Too Small” Markets When experts say a market is “too niche,” ask: Are they measuring current participation or cultural potential? The best opportunities often hide behind conventional wisdom about size limitations.
Read Cultural Momentum, Not Just Data Track social media trends, celebrity adoption, and aesthetic movements in your industry. Culture shifts faster than traditional research can measure.
Focus When Incumbents Diversify Established players become vulnerable when they serve multiple markets. Find the cultural shift they’re too broad to dominate and own it completely.
Move Before Consensus The biggest opportunities exist in the gap between early cultural change and broad market recognition. Once everyone sees the trend, competitive advantage disappears.
Build for Tomorrow’s Customer Don’t just serve today’s market—position for the customer cultural momentum is creating. The tennis brands winning now understood the lifestyle player was coming even when only serious athletes existed.
The tennis opportunity was hiding in plain sight. The question isn’t why experts missed it—the question is what other “too small” markets are building cultural momentum right now while conventional analysis dismisses them.
The strategic question every founder must ask: What cultural shift in your industry looks “too niche” to matter but actually represents tomorrow’s mainstream market?
Because sometimes the best opportunities are exactly the ones everyone else thinks are too small to bother with.
Thanks for reading this week! As always, I love helping small businesses win, whether that’s through my self-paced Social Media Masterclass here or through a 1:1, Direct discovery or working with my agency!
Xx Camille