Where Is Your Customer Right Now? "LinkedIn" Is Not an Answer.

Most founders can tell you who their customer is. They have done the work. They can name the role, the context, the version of the problem the customer feels.

Ask them where that customer is, and the answer collapses. "LinkedIn." "Instagram." "Online." "Reddit." Each one names a platform with hundreds of millions of people on it. None of them tells you where to stand to find the one person you are looking for.

A platform is a city. You cannot meet someone by knowing they live in Chicago. You meet them at an address. Naming the platform feels like answering the question. It names the city and stops.

Reachability is not a growth problem you solve later. It is an operating requirement now.

A market you can describe but cannot enter is a market on paper. The next move depends on one answer, given with specifics: where does this customer already spend their attention, and can you get there?

TL;DR: A Platform Is Not a Place. Find the Address.

Knowing your customer's platform is not knowing where they are. The work is to map where their attention actually goes, name the specific gathering places inside those platforms, and confirm at least one you can enter now. Here is the move, in order:

• Map the attention of one real customer on a typical Tuesday: what they read, where they ask questions, what they belong to

• Make each place specific: not "LinkedIn" but the named group, the named forum, the named event

• Apply the standing test: could you go there right now and find your customer without searching further

• Filter to what you can enter now, without budget, reputation, or relationships you do not have

• Pick the lowest-cost entry point and commit to a first action with a date

Four signals your reachability is still on paper:

• Your answer to "where is your customer" is a platform name, not a place inside it

• Your go-to-market plan names channels you have never personally entered

• You are choosing channels by what sounds right, not by where you have seen the customer

• You could not start a real conversation with a target customer by Friday if you had to

If any of those describe you, this article shows you how to turn a platform into an address you can actually walk into.

If You Found This Article by Searching for Something Else

Most founders who need this are not searching for "customer reachability." They are searching for something more immediate.

• Where to find my first customers.

• Which marketing channels to use.

• How to reach my target audience.

• Where my customers hang out online.

• How to find customers for a B2B startup.

All of those point at the same underlying question. Of all the places your customer could be, which specific one can you enter this week and find them there? This article shows you how to answer it with an address instead of a platform.

Why "LinkedIn" Feels Like an Answer

Naming a platform feels like progress because it is true and it is fast. Your customer probably is on LinkedIn. The answer is not wrong. It is just not usable. A platform is built to hold everyone, which is the point of it, and which is why it tells you almost nothing about where your specific customer pays attention inside it. The same goes for Reddit, Instagram, Google, and "online." They are containers, not locations.

The cost of stopping at the container is a go-to-market plan built on a guess. You pick channels that sound plausible, spend weeks executing against them, and learn too late that your customer was never in the part of the platform you were standing in. The only way to know is to look at where they actually are. "LinkedIn" is what you say when you have not looked yet.

Map the Attention, Not the Demographics

Start with one real customer. Not a persona. A specific person, real or composite, in a specific role. Then trace where their attention actually goes on an ordinary Tuesday.

Take a founder building a contract and deadline tool for solo and small-firm attorneys. The demographic answer is "lawyers." The attention answer is more useful and more specific. Where does a solo attorney read for their work? Where do they go when something is unclear and they need an answer fast? What do they belong to? What do they use every day?

Trace it and the picture sharpens. They read a few practice-management newsletters. When they hit a question they cannot answer, they search, and they land in lawyer forums and a couple of subreddits where other attorneys answer. They belong to their state bar, and many belong to a solo-and-small-firm section inside it. They are in one or two Facebook groups for solo practitioners. They follow a handful of legal-tech voices.

That map is the raw material. Notice that it is built from where the customer already goes, not from where you would like to reach them. The most useful entries are the places where the customer is actively asking questions or looking for help, because that is where attention is highest and a relevant presence is most welcome.

Some customers leave no public trail. A DevOps lead, a security director, a procurement officer may read everything and post nothing. When attention is that quiet, the address is not a discussion thread. It is a place the decision still forces them to appear: a review site like G2 where they vet vendors, a specific conference or its published talks, a certification or compliance standard they have to meet. Quiet attention still has a location. You look for where the buying decision makes them show up, rather than where they choose to talk.

A Platform Is the City. Find the Street Address.

Now convert each entry from a platform into a place. The test is one question, and it is the most useful tool in this entire piece.

Could you go there right now and find your target customer, without searching any further?

If yes, it is specific enough. If you would have to do more work to know exactly where to go, you have named the city, not the address.

Run the attorney map through it. "Reddit" fails the test. "r/Lawyertalk, where solo practitioners trade questions daily" passes. "LinkedIn" fails. "The Solo & Small Firm Section group on my state bar's member listserv" passes. "Legal newsletters" fails. "Lawyerist, a named community and podcast for small-firm lawyers" passes. "Conferences" fails. "ABA TECHSHOW, the legal-tech conference solo attorneys attend" passes.

The difference is not effort. It is whether someone else could follow your directions and arrive at the same spot. A place with a name, a rough size, and a clear front door is an address. Everything else is a city you are pointing at from a distance.

A Place You Cannot Enter Is Not a Place You Can Use

A specific gathering place is necessary. It is not sufficient. The last filter is access, because some addresses are open and some are locked.

Some gathering places require a paid membership. Some require a reputation you have not built. Some are closed networks that run on introductions. The question is not where the customer is in theory. It is where you can reach them now, without resources you do not have.

Sort the attorney addresses by what entry actually costs. The state bar listserv may be the densest concentration of the exact customer, and it may also be closed to non-members, which makes it a future channel rather than a starting one. r/Lawyertalk is open today, free, and active, which makes it a real entry point even if it is noisier. ABA TECHSHOW is high-value and a year away and costs money, so it is a later bet. The Facebook group for solo practitioners is open and enterable this week.

The starting point is not the most prestigious channel or the largest audience. It is the address with the lowest total cost of entry given what you have right now. The founder who reaches for the prestigious channel first burns weeks on a hard path while an open door sat unused.

One caution on the open door. Easy entry and high signal do not always travel together. The most open places are often the loudest, crowded with other founders, vendors, and noise, so a low cost of entry can buy low-quality attention. A gated place is gated partly because it is valuable. When a locked room holds a dense concentration of the exact customer, the move is not to abandon it. It is to find the one member who can let you in, the introduction that turns a closed network into a warm path. Cost of entry decides where you start. Signal quality decides what is worth the climb.

The Test Is a Conversation, Not a Plan

Reachability is not confirmed by a well-built map. It is confirmed when a real conversation starts with someone who came from a specific place through a specific path. Everything before that is a hypothesis about where your customer is.

So the output of this work is not a channel strategy. It is one action with a date. The specific gathering place you can enter, the first step that enters it, and the day you take it. Showing up correctly matters too: in most of these places, contributing and asking land where pitching does not, a point worth its own attention once you are in the door.

The One Sentence That Tells You Where You Stand

A founder who has done this work can fill in one statement without reaching for a platform name:

The specific place I can reach my customer is [named gathering place], where they [the behavior that proves they are there].

I can enter it now because [your real access], and the first step I will take is [specific action] by [date].

A founder who has not done it answers with the city. "LinkedIn." "Reddit." "Online." Those are the platforms this exercise exists to turn into addresses.

If you can name the place, point to evidence the customer is actually there, and describe a door you can walk through this week, you have a reachability answer worth testing. If your best answer is still a platform, you have found the exact gap to close: pick one real customer and trace where their attention goes until a named place appears. Either outcome moves you forward.

One honest caveat. A gathering place you can enter is not a validated channel. It is a place to start looking. A channel is confirmed by conversations that repeat from the same path, and that evidence comes after you enter, not before.

And an address is for validation. A platform is for scale. The named place earns you the first conversations and proves the customer is reachable at all. Turning that into a larger, repeatable engine, including the targeted use of the big platforms, is the next problem, and the right one to have once the address has paid off.

Finding Your Customer and Your Market Clarity

In the Startup Readiness Framework, Market Clarity evaluates whether a founder can name a place where the customer is reachable. Knowing who the customer is does not answer that. Unclear reachability is one of the most common flags in early assessments, because naming a platform feels like an answer and the missing specificity rarely announces itself.

Market Clarity is one of the six pillars in the framework. The Startup Readiness Assessment gives you a full-system diagnostic across all six in under twenty minutes.

Take your Startup Readiness Score free today at startupreadinessscore.com →

Published

By Dr. Shaun P. Digan

Originally published on the Startup.Ready. Blog at startupreadinessscore.com/startup-readiness

Original Publication Date: June 15, 2026

Last Updated: June 15, 2026

About the Author

Dr. Shaun P. Digan is the founder of Startup.Ready and the creator of the Startup Readiness Framework, a research-based system for evaluating and validating early-stage startups before launch and early growth. He holds a PhD in Entrepreneurship from the University of Louisville and has spent over 15 years teaching, advising, and consulting with founders on startup strategy, validation, and growth.

In his writing, including The Foundations of Innovation, he focuses on how founders can make better decisions by improving clarity, alignment, and readiness before scaling.