Concentric Circles Audience Model

Define your audience in narrowing circles from TAM to target audience to a specific model persona at the center

Arielle Jackson
The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, First Round Capital)

Concentric Circles Audience Model

"You can think of it like concentric circles. The biggest circle is your TAM. As you get smaller, there's five parts to it... The dot in the middle is your model persona. This is actually like a person with a name and an age and a location and a job and feelings and priorities and interests." - Arielle Jackson

What It Is

The Concentric Circles Audience Model helps startups define their audience with increasing specificity, from the broadest market down to a single representative person. It prevents the common mistake of trying to be everything to everyone while also avoiding the trap of defining such a narrow niche that it's not a real business.

The key insight: Your target audience (Circle 4) is who you'll outwardly try to acquire for the next 18 months—not the only people who can use your product, but who you're actively going after.

How It Works

The Five Circles

Circle 1 (Outermost): Total Addressable Market (TAM)

  • The broadest set of all possible customers
  • Everyone who could theoretically use your product

Circle 2: Serviceable Available Market

  • Subset of TAM you can actually reach
  • Constrained by geography, language, distribution, etc.

Circle 3: Serviceable Obtainable Market

  • Realistic market you can capture given competition
  • Who you could reasonably win

Circle 4: Target Audience

  • Who you will outwardly try to acquire for the next 18 months
  • Should be nameable as a category (e.g., "tech savvy dads")
  • Big enough that significant market share = big business

Circle 5 (Center Dot): Model Persona

  • A specific (real or composite) person with:
    • Name and age
    • Location and living situation
    • Job title and company type
    • Family situation
    • Interests and priorities
    • Pain points and goals
    • Media consumption habits

Example: Eero (WiFi System)

Target Audience (Circle 4): Tech savvy dads

Model Persona (Center Dot):

  • Lives in suburban St. Louis
  • Has teenage kids who are into gaming
  • 2,800 square foot house made of brick
  • Works from home on Fridays
  • VP of Sales at a tech-adjacent company (not a software engineer)
  • Tech enthusiast, not tech professional
  • Has experienced WiFi dead zones and frustrated kids

Why this worked: "I'm a tech savvy mom. I live with a tech savvy dad. I have an Eero system. It doesn't mean everyone you'll ever acquire must be in that audience, it means that is who we're focused on acquiring."

How to Apply It

  1. Start broad: Define your TAM (everyone who could ever use this)

  2. Narrow progressively: Apply realistic constraints:

    • Who can you actually reach?
    • Who can you realistically win?
    • Who are you specifically going after?

  3. Name your target audience: It should be a recognizable category

    • "Tech savvy dads" ✓
    • "People who want better WiFi" ✗ (too vague)

  4. Build the model persona: Get extremely specific

    • Give them a name
    • Know their house size
    • Know their job frustrations
    • Know what they'd say at a BBQ

  5. Validate the size: If you captured significant share of Circle 4, would it be a real business?

When to Use It

  • When starting a new company or product
  • When refining positioning that feels too broad
  • When teams are arguing about who the customer is
  • Before writing any marketing copy
  • When prioritizing feature requests (does this serve our model persona?)

The Power of Focus

"When you are an early stage company, the worst thing you can do is try to be everything to everyone because you don't have enough runway. You just don't have enough of anything to do that successfully."

Why focus works:

  • Limited resources go further when concentrated
  • Messaging can be specific and resonant
  • Word of mouth spreads within communities
  • Product decisions become clearer

Why it feels scary:

  • "I'm leaving money on the table"
  • "What if I miss people outside my target?"

The reality: People outside your target will still find you. But you're not spending resources chasing them—they come to you as bonus.

Source

  • Guest: Arielle Jackson
  • Episode: "The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, First Round Capital)"
  • Key Discussion: (00:53:05 - 00:56:24) - Explaining the concentric circles model
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

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