Some people have a knack for reading the market. How do they do it? My fiance recently went semi-viral on Reddit posting a silly picture of a truck with ice in it. A truck with ice, seriously?
I asked her if she thought she could go viral again and as we were driving she took a picture of a random house on the side of the road. Again, she went semi-viral.
Naturally, I asked her how she does it. She said:
“I talk to people and I don’t spend so much time behind the computer with my own thoughts.”
Hiding behind your own problems
I think it is too easy to hide behind your own problems.
Paul Graham writes that the best place to look for startup ideas is to focus on problems that you understand — ideally, problems you have yourself.
I find that founders are among the most obscure people I know. They don’t tend to fit into common buckets and the problem with the above advice is that you assume there are other people similar enough to you.
So, how can you trust your own problems? For example, I have a personal problem feeling overwhelmed with social media and I created a super minimalistic photo-sharing app hoping to solve a problem others surely have too. Out of 30 friends that I invited only 1 is stuck as a repeat user - clearly, my friends don’t have the same problem.
The other critical piece of YC advice is to “talk to customers”. An overlooked prerequisite is to know who your customer is in the first place.
How to fix your world view
Unlike my fiance, I don’t have as much confidence in my ability to read the market. I need a practical way to get out of my own way and talk to customers.
Thinking on all the startup advice I have ever consumed across Paul Graham’s essays, Y Combinator videos, and office hours with Boost VC and my own personal experience founding Rehive, I think the best practical strategy (before building anything) is to create a landing page, post some content on social media and schedule 1-to-1 calls.
Scott Fletcher demonstrated this strategy to perfection on IndieHacker. It is a bit ‘markety’, but worked really well for him. He got 60+ comments on his post with founders engaging with him and scheduling calls.
How can AI help
AI is not going to turn you into Max Martin, but it is making it easier and easier by the day to get something out fast to engage with potential customers.
Step 1: Landing page
For example, you can use LampBuilder, an AI landing page generator, to spin up a free custom-hosted domain name explaining your startup idea and linking a calendar link or capturing a waiting list.
I created an example with a startup idea called workstaurants.com. It took 5 mins to create the site and now I have something to use as a conversation starter.
Step 2: Craft a post
A landing page is certainly not enough. You also need to know where to find customers that have this particular problem. That is not all, a major part of the party trick is to also know how to appeal to your target audience.
In this particular case, I plan to post the landing page with the link on a couple of Facebook groups targeting restaurant managers. I turned to ChatGPT to help me craft something thought-provoking. After a bit of back and forth, I got this response:
I tweaked it a bit:
Hey there,
Tired of folks camping at tables with just a cup of coffee? Let’s change the game.
Check out workstaurants.com. Remote workers pay by the hour to work at your place. When their laptop's out, you get money in.
💡 A little light turns at their table so your team knows they’re not just space-takers, they're payers. You can specify available hours, rates, etc.
I am busy gathering feedback from restaurants to improve the concept.
Step 3: Create an image
I also turned to Midjourney to generate an image to go with the post.
After 3 simple steps, I have something to share on social media to potentially attract some interest and meet with restaurant managers.
Conclusion
“The verb you want to be using with respect to startup ideas is not ‘think up’ but ‘notice."‘At YC we call ideas that grow naturally out of the founders' own experiences "organic" startup ideas. The most successful startups almost all begin this way.” - Paul Graham’s How To Get Startup Ideas
If you are not able to read the market cold blank like my fiancé making posts on Reddit, you can turn to AI to help you get out the door. AI now makes it easy to spin up a basic landing page, generate social media copy and images. In less than 10 minutes you’ll have something in front of potential customers to help you book face-to-face time before building anything.
Leveraging these tools can help you ‘notice’ things instead of making assumptions and building something no one wants.