2 builders who never spoke to each other

Read homemade workarounds as proof of demand

A market held together by spreadsheets, templates and manual routines has already told you what it will pay to stop doing. The distinguishing test is action rather than complaint: someone who has built a clumsy fix is a buyer, someone who merely wishes is not.

The method

1. 01

   Treat homemade workarounds as the strongest pre-launch signal: a market held together by spreadsheets and templates is a market waiting to pay for software.

2. 02

   Count spreadsheets as competition. People building crude solutions in Excel or Google Sheets is a signal of a problem worth paying to solve.

3. 03

   When someone describes a problem, ask what they have already done about it: if the answer is nothing then you have a nice to have, while a clumsy workaround already in use means the demand is real.

4. 04

   Test whether a problem is real by watching for people already spending time and improvising workarounds to get around it, and discount anyone who merely says they wish it existed.

5. 05

   Require evidence of action, not just complaint: people must already be attempting to solve the problem before it counts as an opportunity.

What it returned

• Danielle Simpson was losing hours writing student feedback and had rigged up templates and a spreadsheet; she and Arvid Kahl built FeedbackPanda on that problem and later sold it to SureSwift Capital.

• FreshBooks and Airtable given as products that unbundled one Excel job and did it better

• He treats awkward existing workarounds as the marker of a genuinely good product idea, and a problem nobody has tried to fix as not painful enough to sell against.

• The distinction drawn is between someone voicing a wish and someone actively investing effort and hacks to get the job done.

Sources

• ⭐️ The Grand Unified Theory of Product Ideation – Jakob GreenfeldJakob Greenfeld · jakobgreenfeld.com · Inorganic, Bottom-Up Ideation · 2020-10-09
• Is this a good idea?Justin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · An example: Screely · undated
• Who wants this today?Justin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · Case study: FeedbackPanda · undated
• Why people buy softwareJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · Why people buy software · undated
• Why Competition is Good For Business – The Bootstrapped FounderArvid Kahl · thebootstrappedfounder.com · 2021-08-12
• 3 pillars to building a successful businessPreetam Nath · preetamnath.com · Pillar 1 · 2020-06-07