New Venture Lab: Equipping Christian Entrepreneurs

Tracy Bookman January 3, 2012

What is your recommended path to discerning these criteria? i.e. how do we discern what problem exists that is experienced by a large market?

Wade Myers October 2, 2012

If you know the problem exists, then it shouldn't be a stretch to figure out how large the unmet need is because of your familiarity with the market - the point of the post. But even without a lot of familiarity, you can discern the need.

Example: in 1997 when I co-founded a web-based change of address service, nothing like it existed and I could easily figure out that 15 - 20 million households moved each year (roughly 20% of all U.S. households move each year). It was a new idea to make the process of notifying everyone a lot easier with no competition and a huge market. The company was built and sold in 12 months for $4 million.

Today, with Google tools (see this post: https://newventurelab.com/resources/blog.php?id=295), it's a lot easier to see how many searches are being performed for something (the market "need") and you can see what comes up (those trying to serve those needs).