— “Learn how to identify a good business opportunity in the market to aid in the development of new tools and digital solutions from startups.” —
The delimitation of a opportunity with high chances of success in the market represents one of the first steps in developing a startup. With technological innovation and the development of complex data management systems, there has been an improvement in services and in identifying problems that can be solved through digital tools and solutions.
Increasingly, digital businesses are created to outline specific problems and targeted pain points using emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Thus, with technological innovation embedded in the DNA of startups, these ventures have shown significant resilience in the face of financial market instabilities and events that have reconfigured the global economy, such as the pandemic.
1. Finding a problem
Most of the time, the development of a startup begins with identifying a relevant problem that can be solved through a digital solution. This stage involves market research and in-depth data analysis to ensure the business’s viability.
The structuring of the idea and the planning of the startup’s model represent phases that come after identifying the business opportunity. The problem needs to have sufficient recurrence to sustain the business activity.
2. Defining the customer profile
Determining the customer profile, based on the opportunity outlined by the startup’s feasibility study, allows measuring the size of the target audience, which can guide campaigns and the personalized development of the product.
Additionally, establishing the customer profile helps validate public interest in the business. It’s important to understand if the idea truly represents an innovation in the market and how scalable the business can be.
3. Empathy validation
Understanding market pain points goes beyond identifying a good business opportunity. Maintaining empathy with the customer, by proposing an efficient solution to a specific problem, ensures greater accuracy in product creation within startups.
In other words, understanding the user and creating product-oriented research are points that allow verifying the business’s accuracy in the market.
4. Activity management
From the selection of the initial problem to be solved, other challenging tasks will arise along the entrepreneur’s path. Therefore, the chance to leverage the business is related to activity management within the startup.
It’s not possible to solve all problems quickly. Hence, scalable activity management is necessary to delegate tasks and keep all stages of idea development operational.
5. Create products to serve the market
The pursuit of scalability in a startup must follow some indispensable principles for the healthy maintenance of the business in the long term. A poorly explored opportunity can result in substantial losses for the venture.
However, it’s necessary to maintain a balance between the business opportunity and scalability. The developed product must serve and meet the market’s needs, not just the entrepreneur’s expectations.
Technological innovation has enabled startups to survive unforeseen events such as the pandemic and economic instability in developed countries, which would not be achievable without the precise identification of a problem to be solved in the market. Therefore, delimiting the opportunity and validating the public’s empathy are crucial steps to maintain the business’s scalability in a digital environment.
