Niche validator
Before you commit a year to a niche, run it through 7 questions that surface whether anyone will actually pay you.
What this tool does
A bad niche kills more solo businesses than a bad product does. Founders fall in love with an audience that is too small, too cheap, or too unreachable, then spend two years discovering it. The validator runs the same seven questions a savvy investor would ask in the first meeting.
How to use it
- Define your niche in one sentence — who, what, when.
- Answer the seven questions: market size, willingness to pay, accessibility, urgency, competition, your unique angle, and your access.
- Look at the result. If three or more of the seven are red, the niche is probably wrong.
Why it matters
Niche selection is upstream of everything else — your marketing, your product, your pricing, your hiring. Get the niche wrong and you can be brilliant at all four of those and still build nothing. Get the niche right and most of those will fall into place.
Questions people actually ask.
How small is too small?
If the entire addressable market is under a few thousand businesses (or a few hundred thousand consumers), you'll cap out fast. That can still be a great lifestyle business — just not a venture-scale one. Match the niche to the kind of business you want.
How do I know if people will pay?
Ask 10 prospects what they're currently paying to solve this problem. If the answer is 'nothing,' you have a hard sell ahead of you. Existing budget is the single best signal of willingness to pay.
What if my niche has too much competition?
Competition usually means there's a market. Pick a sub-niche the incumbents are ignoring (a geography, a sub-vertical, a job title) and own that. 'Software for restaurants' is crowded; 'software for single-location bakeries' may not be.