This year I’ve been building various new software products as small bets. Niche Report, (project page here), is my favourite so far, as it’s something I’ll use every time I make a new software or business.
The reality is that the journey to starting a new business has enough complexity in it inherently. I’ve seen many potential entrepreneurs suffer the overwhelm and let it either beat them back into their 9-5, or waste months ‘researching’ (often procrastinating, struggling), rather than working on their MVP or launch/marketing.
As I’ve worked through the different products I’ve made this year, it’s been getting clearer and clearer to me that my Ikigai has something to do with helping fledgling entrepreneurs take the leap, (well).
Over my life I’ve mentored several would-be entrepreneurs with good results.
Niche Report is my take on that very first step. Knowing a niche.
There’s so much talk about niches online.
There’s only a few things that really matter.
- Market research is essential. Not only does it inform you about your target audience, but it also lets the entrepreneur/startup feel like they’re ‘in the niche/market’. (Which helps counter the internal dialog “I don’t even know much about {x}, who am I to do this?”.)
- Launch something people know they want, or be ready to educate. All of which starts by getting to grips with your audience.
- Know where your audience hangs out online. So you know where to market (watering holes).
- Know the competitive landscape.
… all of which are now knowable up-to-the-minute thanks to the sheer volume of chatter (signals) online.
There’s a lot of value in doing these early safari’s on a new niche by hand (that is, in the trenches of reddit, X, etc.) But I read time and time again that entrepreneurs struggle to collate, record, or even start to do this essential market research.
Many miss it out altogether.
Niche Report steps in here, using an array of methods to retrieve and analyse the essential signals of any given niche. It means you can fire off a report request, then 24h later have a massive amount of the above done for you, delivered to your inbox (with references back to all sources, and a useful spreadsheet of all the data used to make the report). It never hurts to dig around yourself in your niches watering holes, but Niche Report takes all that ‘unknown’ complexity out of this first logical step for entrepreneurs.
I’ll be formally launching it next week, (yes on ProductHunt even though it’s waining), and I look forward to helping many more entrepreneurs take the leap (effectively).
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