How important to potential customers is the problem you’re exploring, on a scale of 1 to 10? How underserved is the current market, on a scale of 1 to 10? And where would your solution rank? Look for a delta 4+. For more, don't miss my full post
AI
-
How Zip Founders Found $1B Market in Procurement
By
–
The founders of @theziphq went through a variety of ideas looking for a big and underserved market they were excited about (talking to 75+ potential customers!), and eventually focused on procurement (note: their company is currently valued at over $1B):
-
Emerging Trends, Transformative Tech, Customer Validation Strategy
By
–
Questions to reflect on: What’s a trend that’s emerging but underserved (e.g. security, collaboration)? What’s a transformative technology that’s emerging that’s underutilized (e.g. data scalability)? How many potential customers have you spoken with about your idea?
-
Code-Driven Validation: Connecting Ideas to Real User Needs
By
–
What I realized was all our ideas sounded great, but they were not connected to a user pain. For us, writing code, even though it’s not the most efficient use of time, helped us explore ideas best. It forced us to talk to people and build a mental model of the real world.”
-
Validate Your Tech Ideas Early With Potential Users
By
–
Key: Start with a space you're excited about—that's big and underserved—and ideate. But, as soon as you have a concept you're excited about, quickly talk to potential users. @zoink narrowed his focus to two areas he saw potential in (drones and WebGL) and then started digging:
-
Notion founders pivoted no-code builder into focused product
By
–
@ivanhzhao and @akothari at @NotionHQ started with the general idea of a no-code app builder and eventually (four years later!) noticed pull for a specific set of features—and leaned fully into that.
-
Finding Product Market Fit Through Customer Pain Points
By
–
Eventually, she zeroed in on two spaces that felt ripe for opportunity, that she was excited about (security and collaboration), and kept talking to customers to find the biggest source of *pain* and *pull*:
-
Startup Validation: Talk to Users, Not Just Brainstorm
By
–
@borisjabes
, the co-founder of @Census
, shared a similar learning: "Looking back, sitting in a room and trying to come up with a great startup is really bad. We played that exercise for a month, and it’s just bad because we should have been talking to people who had problems." -
Brainstorming Right Way Drives Best B2B Startup Ideas
By
–
One of my biggest surprises from researching the original stories of the best B2B startups is how many of their startup ideas emerged from doing something that's generally discouraged: sitting around and whiteboarding. But, there’s a wrong way and a right way…
-
Whiteboard Ideas vs Real-World AI Startup Viability
By
–
As @christinacaci put it (on her path to building @TrustVanta
): "At the whiteboard stage, it makes so much sense. And in reality, zero sense. We recognized that if you can do it on a whiteboard, someone has probably done it. There’s no $20 bills on the sidewalk."