How the most successful B2B startups came up with their original idea

Ponder and probe

1. What’s a trend that’s emerging but underserved (e.g. security, collaboration)?


2. What’s a transformative technology that’s emerging that’s underutilized (e.g. data scalability)?


3. How many potential customers have you spoken with about your idea?


4. How important to potential customers is the problem you’re exploring, on a scale of 1 to 10?

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No matter which path you take, you are looking for two things: pain and pull . Pain tells you there’s an opportunity to solve a problem, and that it’s important. Pull tells you that you’re actually solving the problem.

Ingredient 2: The market is underserved

Existing solutions need to be doing a subpar job of solving the problem. The founder of CRED, Kunal Shah, has a great framework for evaluating potential new solutions, called Delta-4:

1. What would a customer rate the existing solution on a scale of 1 to 10?


2. What would they rate your solution?

Your solution needs t... See more

Ingredient 1: The problem is important to people

There need to be a lot of people willing to spend a lot of money to solve the problem. Most startups fail not because the idea isn’t good but because the market for the solution is just too small. If you want to build a venture-scale business, a rule of thumb is that there needs to be a clear path to... See more

~40% of startups pivoted at least once before landing on their winning idea—oftentimes more than once.