Market opportunity guides
How to find, research and validate a market opportunity — from market research and niche selection through to starting a company — using evidence people published for their own reasons. Written from the same measurements the rest of this site runs on, and each guide ends in what the index is measuring right now.
What is a market opportunity? Definition, types and how to tell a real one from noise
A market opportunity is demand that exists and is not well served yet. The definition, the four conditions it has to meet, the five types, and the tests that separate a real opportunity from a loud complaint.
6 sections · 4 questions answered
How to find market opportunities: read complaints, count people, check who already serves them
A method for finding market opportunities from public evidence: where demand shows up in the open, the phrases that mark it, how to group and count it, and how to check the gap is real before you build.
7 sections · 4 questions answered
Market opportunity analysis: a seven-step framework you can finish in a week
A working framework for market opportunity analysis — define the problem, size the demand, measure pain, map competition, test willingness to pay, check the trend, and write the scorecard. With the mistakes that make each step useless.
7 sections · 4 questions answered
Startup ideas that come from real demand, not from a list
Why lists of startup ideas do not work, where good ideas actually come from, and how to turn a public complaint into a product idea you can test — with the categories where demand currently runs ahead of the solutions.
5 sections · 4 questions answered
How to validate a startup idea before you write any code
Validation is not asking people whether they like your idea. It is finding evidence that the problem already costs someone money or hours today — the three questions, a weekend-sized demand check, and the signals that mean stop.
5 sections · 4 questions answered
Market gap analysis: finding the gap, and telling it apart from a trap
How to run a market gap analysis from competitor reviews and public complaints — the five kinds of gap, how to score one, and how to recognise the gaps that exist because serving them does not work.
5 sections · 4 questions answered
Market research for startups: how to do it without a budget, a panel or a survey
How to do market research when you cannot afford a research firm: where the free evidence is, what a market analysis actually has to answer, why surveys mislead, and how to read a trend without a keyword tool.
6 sections · 5 questions answered
How to find a niche market: what makes one profitable, and how to tell it from a market that is simply small
A niche market is a segment an incumbent has decided not to serve well. How to find one from public evidence, the four properties that make a niche profitable, and the test that separates a niche from a market that is just too small.
5 sections · 4 questions answered
How to find business opportunities: where they come from, and which ones are worth the year they cost
Business opportunities are not ideas you think up — they are conditions you find. The six places they reliably come from, how to check one against evidence rather than enthusiasm, and how to rank several against each other.
5 sections · 4 questions answered
How to start a startup: the order the steps actually go in, and the questions everyone asks first
Where to start a startup, in the order that wastes the least time: opportunity before idea, evidence before product, one paying customer before a company. Plus straight answers to the questions people ask before they begin.
5 sections · 8 questions answered
Competitor analysis: stop comparing features, start reading who they refuse to serve
Most competitor analysis is a feature table built from the competitor's own marketing. The useful version reads their users' complaints instead: who they under-serve, what they will not fix, and why an empty market is a warning rather than an opening.
5 sections · 5 questions answered
Will customers actually pay? The condition most founders skip, and how to test it before you build
Real demand and willingness to pay are different things, and confusing them is the most expensive mistake in the list. The signals that money is already moving, the tests that cost a conversation instead of a year, and why free-only markets look identical to paying ones in every count.
5 sections · 5 questions answered
Finding market opportunities in app store reviews: the cheapest honest evidence there is
App store reviews are written by people who already paid, at the moment they were angry, about a named product. How to read them as market evidence: which star ratings matter, how to separate a category gap from a bug, and why Vietnamese reviews are the least contested source there is.
6 sections · 5 questions answered
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