The order the steps go in
Six steps, and the order is the entire content of this section. Every one of them is cheap to do in this sequence and expensive to do in any other, because each step produces the input the next one needs.
- Find an opportunity — a demand that exists, is underserved, and someone pays for. Not an idea, a condition of the market.
- Check it against evidence you did not create: distinct people, a cost they are paying, and a trend that has not already turned.
- Only then choose a solution. Ideas are cheap once the opportunity is fixed, and you can afford to pick a boring one.
- Sell it before you build it. A promise someone pays for, or refuses to pay for, is worth more than any amount of encouragement.
- Build the smallest thing that discharges the promise, for the people who already paid.
- Incorporate, raise, hire — after there is something to incorporate around. These are consequences of a business, not preconditions for one.
Why step one is not the idea
An idea and an opportunity fail differently, and that difference decides how much a mistake costs. A wrong idea aimed at a real opportunity is recoverable: you change the product and the demand is still sitting there waiting. A brilliant idea aimed at an imagined opportunity cannot be rescued by execution, funding or persistence, because there was never anyone on the other end.
Since ideas are the abundant input and verified demand is the scarce one, spending the scarce effort first is the only sequence that makes sense — and it is the reverse of how the story is usually told.
One paying customer before a company
The registration, the brand, the deck and the co-founder agreement are all work that feels like progress and answers no question. The one thing that answers a question is a person handing over money for a description of something that does not exist yet, because that is the only signal in the whole process that cannot be produced by enthusiasm.
A refusal is worth almost as much, provided you ask why and the answer is about the problem rather than about you. Both outcomes cost a conversation; building for six months to find out costs six months.
Starting alone, and starting at night
Neither is a handicap at this stage. The first two steps are reading and arithmetic, and they do not need a co-founder, a budget or a full-time commitment — they need a few hours a week for a month. The point at which a job becomes a genuine constraint is the point at which customers need answering during business hours, which is later than most people quit.
Choosing a co-founder before there is an opportunity also picks the person for the wrong reason — availability instead of fit to a problem neither of you has identified yet.
Where this site fits in the sequence
Opportunity Market covers steps one and two. It collects public complaints, groups the different phrasings of one problem into a single cluster, counts distinct people, and scores each cluster on demand, pain, momentum, competition, monetization potential and evidence quality — with every score linking back to the posts behind it. It does not generate ideas, and that is deliberate: step three is the cheap step.