Engineering Journal 2: Analyze the potential opportunity
…to improve a circumstance of ordering land grading services using Outcome Driven Innovation
Before I go deeper into building mode for this product, it is important to understand if this is a problem people want to be solved. Even if they don’t know this can be solved, are they experiencing any friction in the process along the way to the current best available outcome.
The question becomes:
“Where do I find potential users?”
“Who is finding themselves in this particular circumstance and what alternatives are they choosing to get the job done?”
“How can I find them right when the pain is strongest?”
Who is my primary customer? Businesses that provide land grading services or those people who are calling these companies to get services done on their property? Well, without the market of those whose properties need to be graded, there would be no suppliers because the need wouldn’t exist. Another question to ask yourself is have there been builders before me who tried to improve the experience in this market. Upon doing some research, I see other companies providing similar solutions, Angi (https://www.angi.com/), homeguide (https://homeguide.com/), that provide a version of the solution I would like to offer. This proves that there is a market that does exist. Whether or not I am able to provide additional value depends on what new insights I can bring to the stakeholders in the market. From what I can tell, Angi, the leading solution in the market is largely lead generation while the solution I am envisioning is more project and relationship management.
This article (How to Get Startup Ideas by Jared Friedman) is a credible source to evaluate the idea. Ycombinator is a start-up incubator that encounters many variations of startups. So you can assume that they have documented what makes a new business venture successful or fail. What I am looking for is founder/market fit. Am I the right person to be solving this problem for this given market? Before investing more time into this application, I should probably consider if there are other opportunities that I would be best suited for given my background and experience. Also, the most challenging part is to get people talking about their experience when they are ordering or providing yard leveling.
But, while we're here we can keep building this for fun, learn something, until some other opportunity walks past.
That’s all I have for now…until the next update.
