In the very beginning, we recommend talking with customers and people who understand your potential target market in a very open ended way to help refine your hypothesis of who your customer is.

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Cahoot, with only 56 staff, wants to attract customers by being the lowest-cost players in the market and plans to target the individual needs of customers.

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More specifically, these start-up CEOs must hire talent, create a strong culture, build products that attract customers, pick a market to target, and develop a business model.

FORBES: Silicon Valley's Mentoring Gap

When they were done, you knew their target customers, their business models and their go-to-market strategies.

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The brewer has been restrained to the U.S. and British market, where high unemployment and weak job growth directly hit its target customers.

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Longtime rival Credit Suisse, aided by its acquisition of America's DLJ Direct, is offering both an online and a "personal banker" service, but its target market extends to slightly less prosperous customers.

FORBES: Merci, PaineWebber?