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Unthinkable

Blog

Updates on Unthinkable, and notes on discovering business opportunities and testing ideas for solving them.

Articles

How to Run a Concierge MVP Before Writing Code

Learn how to run a concierge MVP, map your manual workflow, and serve exactly ten paying customers before writing a single line of software.

Where to Find B2B Software Ideas

Discover how to uncover profitable B2B software ideas by looking at manual spreadsheets, expensive consultants, and emerging compliance deadlines.

How to Get Your First 10 Customers

Learn the exact math, outreach volumes, and direct sales methods required to acquire your first ten paying customers across B2B, consumer, and local markets.

How big a market must be to justify building

Calculate the exact market size you need by working backwards from your revenue goals. Learn why small markets are safer and how to spot a sizing trap.

How to Test an App Idea With an App Store Pre-Order

Learn how to use App Store pre-orders to measure real purchase intent, calculate acquisition costs, and validate your iOS app before launch.

How to Turn a Problem at Your Day Job Into a Business

Your day job is a goldmine for B2B ideas, but a legal minefield for founders. Learn how to validate demand signals and navigate IP clauses.

How to Validate a Subscription Business Idea

Learn how to validate a subscription business idea by testing willingness to pay, predicting churn, and using annual prepay offers to measure real demand.

How to Size a Market Using Free US Census Data

Learn how to use County Business Patterns, the American Community Survey, and Nonemployer Statistics to size B2B and B2C markets with free Census data.

How to test a physical product idea before paying for tooling

Physical products cost too much to build on a hunch. Learn how to validate demand, run the arithmetic for small batches and test via crowdfunding.

How to Spot a Rising Trend Before It Peaks

Learn how to spot a rising trend before it peaks by tracking new vocabulary, analyzing niche job posts, and calculating the math of being early.

Estimating Customer Lifetime Value Without Churn Data

Learn how to estimate customer lifetime value before launch by borrowing benchmarks, calculating gross margin, and adjusting for early churn.

How to Use a Waitlist to Validate Demand

An email address is the cheapest signal to fake. Learn how to make a waitlist mean something using qualifying questions and small deposits.

How To Find B2B SaaS Ideas Hidden In Job Postings

Learn how to read job boards as software briefs. Discover how to find recurring manual tasks, calculate price ceilings, and pitch hiring managers directly.

How to Calculate Customer Acquisition Cost Before You Launch

Forecast CAC per channel before launch using CPC benchmarks, conversion rates, and a 1,000 click paid test, then check it against LTV and payback period.

How to Price a New Product Before Launch Using Buyer Value

Learn to price a new product from the cost of the buyer's current alternative, why cost-plus and Van Westendorp mislead, and why to launch high and discount.

How to Validate a B2B SaaS Idea Before You Build Anything

Validate a B2B SaaS idea by finding the budget line, running ten discovery calls with its owner, and treating only a signed letter of intent as a yes.

How Much to Spend on Ads to Test a Business Idea Before Launch

Why a validation ad test needs about 300 search clicks, what that costs at real CPCs, and how to set break-even and kill rules before you spend anything.

Market Research Survey Questions That Work for a New Product

Learn which survey questions predict nothing, how to write ranking and segmentation questions that work, and how many responses you need to trust results.

When to Give Up on a Business Idea Using Kill Criteria

Learn to set kill criteria with a metric, threshold, deadline and spend cap, plus stage by stage defaults and why quitting fast raises your odds of success.

How to Validate a Marketplace Idea by Testing the Supply Side

Learn to find your marketplace's constrained side, recruit suppliers who complete real jobs, and broker 20 transactions by hand before writing any code.

How to Find People to Interview About a Business Idea

Learn how to source ten people to interview about your business idea using review platforms, niche groups, and highly targeted cold outreach.

How to pre-sell a product before building it

Learn why pre-selling beats waitlists, how to anchor your pricing, and the exact math you need to validate demand before writing any code.

App Store keyword research for new developers

Learn how to do App Store keyword research by analyzing Apple autocomplete data, translating category ranks, and avoiding unwinnable search terms.

How to find free keyword search volume

Learn where free keyword search volume numbers come from, the error margins on each tool, and which data sources can safely carry business decisions.

How to Use Google Trends to Validate a Business Idea

Google Trends is a negative filter. Learn how to use the five year view, decode the relative scale, and avoid the trap of breakout search terms.

How to Filter a Problem Into a Business Idea

Most problems are not businesses. Learn the three filters that separate mild friction from a monetizable business idea using a worked example.

How to Test a Business Idea With No Money

Learn how to test a business idea with no money. A ranked list of validation methods starting at zero dollars to find real purchase intent and users.

Why Taken Business Ideas Are Better to Build

Discover why a taken business idea is actually a competitive advantage. Learn how to identify market gaps, attack tech debt, and win against incumbents.

How to research competitors before starting a business

Learn how to extract pricing models, review volumes, and demand signals from competitors to validate your business idea before writing any code.

Why Most Startup Ideas Fail Before Writing A Line Of Code

Startups fail due to no demand, the wrong buyer, or poor distribution. Learn why demand is the only factor you can verify before building your product.

How to Find a Defensible Niche for a Small Business

Finding a niche is a strict search process. Learn how to use demand signals, workflow constraints, and real arithmetic to find defensible markets.

Choose Between an App or Website Based on Distribution

Stop choosing between an app and a website based on coding preference. Learn how to let user distribution and search volume dictate your platform choice.

Signs a Business Idea is Already Saturated

A high competitor count does not mean a market is saturated. Learn the five mathematical tests to distinguish a crowded market from a dead one.

How To Size A Market Using Public Data And Basic Math

Learn how to calculate market size from the bottom up using public data, competitor reviews, and basic math. Stop relying on expensive top-down reports.

How To Run A Fake Door Test For Your Next Software Product

Learn how to build a fake door landing page, calculate the exact traffic you need, and measure the only metric that proves real market demand.

How Many Customer Interviews to Conduct Before Building

Discover exactly how many customer interviews you need before writing code, which questions ruin your data, and the math behind a validated idea.

Find Underserved Local Markets With Data

Learn how to calculate local market gaps using population per venue, drive-time isochrones, competitor age, and public demand signals in your city.

Mining App Store Reviews for Product Ideas

Learn a concrete method to extract profitable product ideas from App Store reviews. Use one-star and three-star demand signals to find market gaps.

How to find a problem worth solving in public data

Stop brainstorming. Learn how to find profitable business ideas by reading public demand signals in support threads, feature requests and one-star reviews.

How To Tell If A Business Idea Has Real Demand

Stop asking friends if they like your app idea. Learn how to identify real demand signals, find bad workarounds, and validate ideas before building.

Validate a business idea in four steps, cheapest first

The four validation steps in cost order: keyword volume, forum reading, five customer calls, a $200 fake door. With the arithmetic worked through for each.

TAM SAM SOM for Founders: Defensible Market Sizing

Unlock the power of TAM, SAM, and SOM to effectively size your market and impress investors with your pitch deck strategies.

How to Find an Underserved Market Before You Build

Find an underserved market by tracking workarounds, price gaps and segment gaps. A one week research plan, the signals that matter, and the traps to avoid.

Fake Door Test: Validate Demand Before You Build

Learn how to validate demand with a fake door test. Discover actionable steps to gauge interest before building new features.