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independence2 unconnected · 2 more authors in those circles
applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

confidence

high

evidence

14 claims · 12 articles · 4 receipts

window

2013-08-06 → 2018-01-29 · nothing since 2018

2 builders who never spoke to each other

List the groups you belong to and rank them

Write out every community you are actually part of, then filter on where you hold an advantage, which one interests you now and which has money. Doing the research before you have an idea at all lets the idea come from their needs, and a market you cannot make yourself care about should be dropped whatever the numbers say.

The method

  1. 01

    Write out every group you belong to, then filter that list with three questions - where do I have an unfair advantage, which excites me most right now, and which has money to spend.

  2. 02

    Evaluate several candidate audiences against each other before committing to one.

  3. 03

    Pick the group you intend to help before you pick what to build, then research what they need.

  4. 04

    Start from who you want to help and ask what they actually lack - education, a better product, different hours - and if they're already well served, abandon the idea and move to the next.

  5. 05

    Do the research before you have an idea at all: study groups of people online, what they discuss and what they lack, then derive the idea from their needs instead of your own.

What it returned

  • Justin's own list ran from product managers and bootstrappers to podcasters, snowboarders and cyclists before he settled on product bootstrappers.

  • Jarrod Drysdale, author of Bootstrapping Design, says he learned this in Amy Hoy's 30x500 class.

  • From years of hanging out with developers online and in person, Justin identified that they can build anything but find marketing confusing and intimidating, and built his products around that.

  • Marie Poulin had sold many different services over the years before Notion training was the first thing that felt like product-market fit.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.

More in positioning

all positioning plays

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.