I listened to Sturgill Simpson’s new album (The Ballad of Dood & Juanita) this week. It lasts about 25 minutes and is really more a single extended song than an album. This is a bluegrass album and follows on the heels of two other bluegrass releases. It is the sort of thing I might listen to once or twice more, but not the sort of project I will come back to over and over like some of his earlier music. This shift to bluegrass music is at least the second turn in Sturgill Simpson’s genre-bending career, and his artistic choices and refusal to chase money through those choices offer a case study applicable beyond the music world.

Listening to the music brought to mind an essay I have read several times, 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly (LINK). Its basic premise is that an artist or creator does not require millions of fans to make a good living, only a small number of thousands who will stick with you no matter what you produce and will keep buying from you. It is a different mindset to chase a small number of superfans rather than to try to please the masses. In many ways it is easier as your most passionate fans will let you know how they feel, and it is easier to respond to even a negative reaction than to ambivalence.

I cannot say I’m a superfan of any musician. I listen on Spotify and attend a few concerts a year but don’t buy vinyl records or band t-shirts. Sturgill Simpson was the last concert I attended, and even at that show I witnessed a version of some fans who had hopped off the bandwagon. As his most recent album at that time was a rock & roll record more than a country record (one that was turned into an anime film on Netflix—how’s that for genre-bending?), one of the couples sitting beside me left after Tyler Childers’s opening set of more traditional country music. Sturgill Simpson’s country records had introduced them to Tyler Childers, but they weren’t willing to join Sturgill on a journey outside of country music to a netherworld between country and rock. Their loss, and it gave me extra room to stretch out too.

The principle of 1,000 true fans applies even outside artistic pursuits. For startups, a small number of true fans becomes a beachhead and those true fans will do more for your company than any advertising campaign could ever hope to achieve. Even Amazon started out as just a bookstore before it upended global retail.

If you are a creator or building a startup, think about how cultivating a small audience is an alternative to trying to be all things to all people. The internet has made distribution easier than it has ever been and there are no longer any gatekeepers preventing you from sharing your work and ideas. If you are a startup, get your MVP ready and take it to your target customers. Then make contact with these first users regularly to solve their problems and develop a core of rabid proselytizers for your product or service. And if you are a fan, support the artists and creators who bring a little joy into your life. Your support allows them to devote themselves to the work and to produce more and better versions of what you enjoy from them.