Experienced entrepreneur and leader in science-based businesses Bob Jones, in a lesson at MIT University, talked about how his failure to understand his customers caused him to fail. He saw a need in the market, made a product to satisfy that need, but he marketed to the wrong people. Revenues dropped <10 of the forecast. BUT when he was recruited by a bunch of Doctors from Harvard Med School, he had learned from his error. Now, the first thing he did was to identify the customer for the product they wanted to create.
Because of this, their product got free deals from wholesalers, shelf space in pharmacies for free and generated millions in revenue. Even more than they forecasted. All of this because he had marketed to the right customer. AND used his customers to get supposedly paid for services… for free! That’s how much you stand to gain if you just market to the right customer.