1. Aspiring Entrepreneurs.
2. Individuals seeking friendships.
I've had my share of attempts and failures in addressing the first group. What I've observed is that those truly determined to kickstart their ventures, do so irrespective of having a perfect plan; they improvise and adapt along the way. Conversely, others often get stuck in the preparation phase, finding reasons to delay their launch.
The second group, on the surface, presents what appears to be a gold mine of opportunity, especially in a world increasingly battling loneliness and social isolation. The idea is simple: create a platform akin to a dating app where users can input their location, specify if they are interested in local or long-distance friendships, share demographic information, preferences, and interests. A straightforward algorithm then churns out a list of potential matches. Users can start conversations, fostering connections, and ideally, forming friendships.
However, the practicality of this concept has not lived up to expectations. Pre-pandemic, I organized several meetups revolving around shared interests and socialization, yet they didn't gain the traction I hoped for.
So, it leads me to ponder - when there’s a clear need or desire for a particular service or platform but no viable market materializes, how can one navigate this conundrum? Whether the goal is profitability or merely making a positive impact, how do we discern a true market from a perceived one? Your insights, experiences, and advice would be greatly appreciated.
If there's actually no market, then there isn't a clear need or desire for the product. This can be true even if you personally need or desire the product, or if it's obvious the product is a thing people need.
Or it could be there's a viable market, but it's smaller than you think, or that it's of the sort that it's spread thinly around and there's no easy way of addressing it as a whole.
This stuff is really tricky, and it's why I think that it's a mistake to produce a product before you have identified the market you want to address and how you'll reach it. Also, what your viable market looks like will (or should) have a huge impact on the design of your product or service.
I know none of this is really helpful. It's just what I've learned to be true in decades of doing this sort of thing.