📄️ Step 1: Define your business hypothesis
Before researching anything you need a clear written statement of what you are building and for whom. This is your starting point for everything that follows.
📄️ Step 2: Define your market boundaries
Before you can measure an opportunity you need to know exactly what you are measuring. Market definition is the foundation of everything that follows.
📄️ Step 3: Size the market opportunity
You need to know if this market is large enough to build a business in. Market size also tells you how analysts think about growth and who the major players are.
📄️ Step 4: Identify the forces shaping your market
Markets are not static. Understanding what is driving change tells you where opportunity is opening up and where it is closing down.
📄️ Step 5: Map who is currently buying
Before you talk to a single customer you need to understand who the market currently serves. This prevents you from asking questions that have already been answered publicly.
📄️ Step 6: Map the competitive landscape
You are not entering an empty market. Every customer you want to serve already has alternatives. Understanding those alternatives is the foundation of your positioning.
📄️ Step 7: Find the gaps your competitors are missing
The opportunity is not in what competitors do well. It is in what they consistently fail to do for specific customer segments.
📄️ Step 8: Understand what is possible to build
Technology selection follows customer understanding. But you need to know what is possible and what it costs before you can make honest capability assessments later.
📄️ Step 9: Validate and verify your research
AI produces plausible content regardless of accuracy. Before you build anything on top of this research you need to verify the claims that matter most.
📄️ Step 10: Build your hypothesis document
Research becomes strategy when it is organized into explicit, testable beliefs. Your hypothesis document is the foundation that every subsequent decision builds on.
📄️ Step 11: Build your interview guide
Your hypotheses are ready to test. Before you talk to a single customer you need questions designed to surface whether your beliefs are right or wrong.
📄️ Step 12: Organize your research repository
Your research is only as valuable as your ability to find and use it. A structured repository keeps your findings accessible throughout the entire process.
📄️ Step 13: Readiness check: are you ready to talk to customers?
Preliminary research is complete when you are informed enough to have an expert conversation. This step confirms you are ready before you invest time in customer interviews.
📄️ Step 14: Preliminary research
Before you build anything, you need to know where the fish are. This is how you find out.