On Finding Good Market — Build3 Lessons

A lot of it boils down to minimizing your chances of failure. And one big part of that is avoiding the wrong arena. You can have real talent — skills you learned and earned over time, which should raise your odds of winning. But if you walk into the wrong game, where the sheer amount of change happening around you is overwhelming, talent will not save you. You lose before you even play.

Market is the most important determinant

Learnings: The single most important determinant for your startup is — Market.

My take: We obsess over ideas, tech, decks. The session said shift that energy to market. A great team with a poor market gets ground down; an average team in a great market gets pulled forward. I have underweighted this before. Not anymore — market first, then everything else.

Marathon is wrong, surfing is right

Learnings:

The wrong analogy for entrepreneurship is a race or marathon — in a marathon you have control over pace and direction.

The right analogy is surfing:

• No one controls the ocean
• It is different for everybody
• Wave = Market
• Great surfer + great wave = magic happens — it takes both

My take: Marathon tells you to run harder. Surfing tells you to read the water and pick the right wave. Hard work still matters — you cannot surf without paddling — but effort without a wave is just treading water. I am asking myself less how hard am I working? and more which wave am I even trying to catch?

What is a market?

Learnings:

As Theodore Levitt said:

Customer does not want a six-inch drill, they want a six-inch hole.

From there, the session defined:

• Market = Customer + Job to be done (JTD)
• Customer = who pays
• User = who uses
• In one market they are the same person; in another they split — e.g. Customer = Parent, User = Child
• Same job + different customer = different market
• Changing the customer or the JTD changes the market

My take: This definition cuts through fog. Drill vs hole keeps you from falling in love with your tool. Splitting customer and user stops you from designing for the wrong person. I have pitched a drill when the person only wanted the hole — need to keep that check front and center.

Niche first, key second

Learnings:

• Niche = small and well-defined slice of a bigger market
• Successful entrepreneurs carefully pick a strong starting niche
• Unsuccessful ones either start with no niche or a weak one

And the key mental model:

Do not start with a key and then build a lock. Start with a niche and then figure out the key.

My take: The lock-first image stuck. Ideas feel like keys looking for a lock. Starting with a niche flips it — find a real, narrow lock worth opening, then make the key fit. Niche feels small, but small and well-defined beats big and vague. Entry is narrow, expansion comes later.

3 ways founders get market wrong

Learnings:

1. Poor Founder-Market Fit — weak overlap between founder and market
2. Starting with No Niche or a Weak One — the highlighted mistake in the slide
3. Targeting a Market with Inadequate Growth Potential — the slide showed an empty wallet — a small, non-growing market cannot carry a startup

My take:

1. Founder-Market Fit — matters more than it sounds. Not about credentials, but about lived understanding, network, and staying power in that space. If you do not care enough to stay for years, fit is poor no matter how smart you are.
2. No/Weak Niche — the most common trap. Broad market feels safe, but it means no wedge, no word-of-mouth, no beachhead. I would rather be clearly for someone than vaguely for everyone.
3. Inadequate Growth — even a loved product dies in a shrinking pocket. Early on it is not about TAM slides, it is about whether this niche can grow or connect to an adjacent bigger one. If not, the wallet stays empty.

6 lenses to find good markets

Learnings:

1. Your unfulfilled JTD
2. You already solved this JTD for people (or have in the past)
3. People you enjoy spending time with and solving problems for
4. A gap in the market you have noticed
5. Lists of unsolved problems and prioritised domains
6. Something new in the takeoff stage

My take:

1. Unfulfilled JTD — start with your own itch. You feel the pain daily, so you will not quit at the first no.
2. Already solved — proof you can deliver. If you have solved it for one, you may be able to systematize it for many.
3. People you enjoy — underrated. Who you serve determines who you spend years talking to. Energy matters.
4. Gap noticed — observation edge. Markets leave gaps before data shows them.
5. Lists/Domains — borrow wisdom. Impact lists and prioritised domains keep you from only seeing what is in front of you.
6. Takeoff stage — timing lens. Something new that is just starting to lift — early enough to shape, late enough to be real.

Picking a market through these six lenses feels more honest than brainstorming ideas in a vacuum.

Turning lenses into a map — a method you can run

Learnings: The session gave a 2-step sheet to turn the 6 lenses into testable markets. The sheet is a template — the 3 rows shown (sustainable retreats, founder-VC gap, animal welfare) are just one filled example. Use it as a process, not a prescription.

Step 1 — Brain dump (diverge, no judging):

Create 6 columns, one per lens. Set a timer — 5 minutes per column. Quantity over quality.

• (1) Your unfulfilled JTD: What job are you hiring a product for and not finding a good answer?
• (2) JTDs you already solved: What have you already helped people do, even informally? Past proof counts.
• (3) People you want to solve for: Who do you actually enjoy spending time with? Be specific, not aspirational.
• (4) A gap you noticed: Where do you see a painful workaround, a broken supply chain, or an underserved behavior?
• (5) Listed problems / prioritised domains: Pull from curated lists — SDGs, impact domains, or a trusted problem database. Borrow, do not invent.
• (6) Something new in takeoff: What technology, regulation, or behavior just started to lift and is now cheap enough to build on?

Rule: one short phrase per cell, 5–8 per column minimum. No ranking yet.

Step 2 — Synthesize (converge into markets):

Make a second sheet with 4 columns: Theme | Customers | JTDs | Ideas/Misc (last).

1. Cluster: Read across the 6 columns and group related cells into a Theme. A Theme is not an idea, it is a problem space — e.g. Sustainable retreats or Founder-Startup ecosystem gap.
2. Name the Customer: Who pays? Be narrow enough to find in a day — e.g. Conscious travelers / digital nomads who already pay for retreats vs everyone who likes nature. If Customer and User split, note both.
3. Write the JTD properly: Use the format When [situation], I want [goal] so I can [outcome]. If you cannot write it cleanly, you do not yet have a market.
4. Ideas last: Park any solution in Ideas/Misc and keep it disposable. Market = Theme + Customer + JTD. Idea is just one possible key for that lock.

Example of a synthesized row (from the filled sheet, for illustration only):

Repeat until you have 3–5 such rows. Then score each row on 4 quick checks: Do you have Founder-Market Fit to stay 3+ years? Is the niche small and well-defined? Can you actually reach this customer this month? Is there growth/pocket to expand into? Keep the top 2, park the rest.

My take: Step 1 gives permission to dump without judging. Step 2 forces you to choose — and to keep Ideas last. That order is the lesson: Theme + Customer + JTD is the market; Ideas column is intentionally disposable — niche before key again. When I ran it, good markets clustered around people I know and problems I have lived, not around clever ideas. The sheet is a mirror as much as a map — if none of your top rows pass the 4 checks, you have not found a market yet, you have just listed wishes.

Summary

Learnings:

• Main idea — the 1 thing most people do not understand is that market plays an enormous role in success
  • Entrepreneurship is not running, it is surfing
• Market = Customer + Job to be done
  • Customer = who pays, User = who uses
  • JTD = goal they want or problem they want solved
  • Changing customer or JTD changes the market
• Biggest market mistakes:
  • Poor Founder-Market Fit
  • Weak / no niche
  • Market with inadequate growth potential

My take: Market is the wave. Niche is your entry point on that wave. Founder-Market Fit is why you get to stay on it. The rest — solution, distribution, business model — are how you ride. Get market wrong and nothing downstream fixes it.

More to come as the program unfolds. I will keep posting these notes — short, honest, from the session plus what I actually think about it.