a single source, nothing corroborates it

Choose a market you could list on a spreadsheet

Score an idea on whether its buyers can be enumerated: listed in a directory, findable by category, reachable at a known address. A market whose members cannot be counted cannot be worked, however real the pain is, and the search runs in reverse just as well.

The method

1. 01

   Score each idea on how physically easy the buyers are to locate, and reject markets whose members cannot be enumerated.

2. 02

   Run the search in reverse as well: start from a group of buyers who are trivially easy to locate and only then invent a product for them.

3. 03

   A passing answer names the directory, the count and the physical action, such as pulling fifty construction firms off Yelp, ringing each one and going to their offices to pitch.

What it returned

• Window cleaning firms list contact details under their own category on Yelp and Yellow Pages, and lawyers can be searched for and visited; travelling salespeople scattered across the country cannot be found at all

• Roofing companies list contact details in business directories, and you could meet roughly ten roofers a day by standing in the right aisle of a hardware store

Sources

• How to Get Startup Ideas: The Meat Grinder Approach - Tyler TringasTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · How will I get the first 25 customers? Then the next 250? · 2016-04-23
• Chapter 5: Getting Your First Customers - Tyler TringasTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · 2017-01-19
• Chapter 2: What Makes A Good Micro-SaaS Idea? - Tyler TringasTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · A defined group that needs your product · 2016-10-28