Monopolize a bottleneck that is not the core product. Instead of competing on features, brand, or price, identify a mandatory step that every player in a niche must pass through to operate—compliance paperwork, data formatting, vendor onboarding, risk review, payments reconciliation, internal approvals—and quietly become the fastest, safest, or officially “accepted” way to clear it. You don’t market to end users; you sell to operators, legal teams, or executives who hate friction more than they care about innovation. Once embedded, switching costs are psychological, procedural, and political rather than technical, which makes you far harder to replace than a better product. The goal isn’t dominance through popularity, but inevitability through infrastructure—when your solution becomes the path of least resistance, competitors must either integrate with you or work around you at a disadvantage.