02 // BuildLean - Finding High-Growth Product Opportunities

Use a Logbook

Before we go on, I wanted to stress an important note: Keep a research logbook and link your references. This will save time later on and help you to organise important facts and data. This will be useful later on when we start looking at quantifying the problem and market size.

Introduction

In the last Blog “BuildLean - How to Find the Right Product Categories to Play In” we identified “Goal Statements” in order to choose an area you personally have high energy and enthusiasm for.

Here’s a reminder of my goal statements:

1. “I want to help people age-in-place so they can live independently at home and improve people's lives as they age”.

2. “I have experience in sports and recovery and I want to improve access to wellness technology and products for everyday athletes or sports enthusiasts”.

3. “As a new father, I understand the challenges with looking after a baby and want to make the experiences easier so parents experience less stress and give more time back in their day”.

4. “I have identified a new technology that allows you to [Insert benefits], and I want to apply this to [Insert market segment/ category]”.

5. “I want to help toddlers learn better and engage in more screen-free activities to improve their development and long term mental-health”.

We now want to strategically find more focussed opportunities and narrow down the categories you’ve revealed from the 4P’s. Move from a high-level goal statement, to specific markets which have the potential to create a high-growth business. The point to stress here is, we’re NOT coming up with ideas (yet). Coming up with random ideas is dangerous for a few reasons:

1. Idea confirmation bias.

2. You’ll become “married” to one specific idea.

3. You’ll miss opportunities with higher potential.

4. You’ll end up building something no one wants to buy.

5. You’ll automatically be in “prove” mode, when actually you need to be in “disprove” mode. This is where you sub-consciously interpret or look for information that confirms existing assumptions or hypotheses.

By not looking at two sides of the argument (and therefore disproving as well as proving), the project will lack true and factual data to effectively define the problem, opportunity and robustly test the product proposition. Always practice radical honesty, question “why” in everything you do and gain insights from real strangers who are in your target market.

To avoid this, here are the steps I’m going to take to narrow down my goal statements into problem opportunities:

1. Identify Trending Categories

By researching current trends, consumer behaviour, needs, wants and where funding opportunities are focussed, this is usually a good indication of problem areas which are growing, and can also signify government initiatives.

Grants

In the UK we have the UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) Funding Finder, this is a great start: https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/. You also search for regional grants and funding opportunities such as the Cross-Cluster Proof of Concept in Space, Energy, Health and Life Sciences, Quantum, Digital, and Defence and Security.

Trend Reports

Research conducted by professional organisations like WGSN and EY provide free or paid resources showing current consumer trends. These can be a good source of “the future”. For example, WGSN recently released a sample report called “Top Trends 2025” (https://www.wgsn.com/en/resources/sample-reports).

Ai Deep Research

Leveraging ChatGPT to conduct “Deep Research” with a well crafted prompt also gives some brilliant information. If you pay for the PLUS plan you can receive an in-depth report on current trends in an area you specify. I have crafted an effective prompt with instructions - you can find out more by signing up to my newsletter for additional information (Sign up Here).

Research Papers

Online research into various literature into specific areas can spark inspiration and provide problems people are researching. I use PubMed to find recent papers: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

Articles

The internet is full of insights from industry experts to social media influencers. Find out who they are in the category you’re researching, and identify what their latest and most popular articles are on the subject. LinkedIn is best here, particularly for experts building a personal brand. A good example is Chris Donnelly (LinkedIn Profile). He has businesses ranging from helping the elderly (Lottie), to SAAS products using Ai to build websites.

These articles will reveal problems and opportunities you might not have been aware of.

Competitor Research

This is a gold mine of consumer insights. By finding out who the main competitors are in the space you want to play in, you can start to build a matrix of products which they have launched to solve specific problems.

And the best part? It’s likely the internet will be full of customer feedback, reviews, complaints and insights. Find their reviews on Amazon, YouTube, TrustPilot, and Reddit. Find out where their products can be improved and identify market gaps. This information can also be used to record your target market's main problems.

Emerging Technologies

This is a tricky one, because they’re not always easy to find. Keep your eyes open on tech news and new intellectual property with organisations who might be of interest. For example, you may spot new technology in cross-industry applications like new sensor technology in med-tech that could be applied to a consumer product. Or maybe even an industrial tool that can be reapplied to Health-tech.

Alternatively, you may have invented a core technology yourself but don’t have a clear use or benefit for it (yet). If this is the case, don’t develop it any further until you have found high-growth markets, significant unmet pains and problems for a market segment which would benefit the most from it.

Remember, as you are researching within these areas, start to record problems and ideas that you discover. The biggest consumer pain points and opportunities will start to repeat themselves and become clearer on your journey.

2. Consumer Insights (Secondary Research)

Before spending too much time interviewing real strangers in person (Primary consumer research), you can gain rich insights as an indication of significant unmet needs, problems and opportunities. For this, I always use Reddit and Competitor product research (as stated above). However, you can be more specific here.

My favourite starting point is ChatGPT. Again, you can use the “Deep Research” tool with an effective prompt for ChatGPT to scour Reddit and pick out insights in an area you choose.

For example, after you’ve identified a growing trend, you can ask ChatGPT to find pain points people are talking about on Reddit. If you can see a reoccurring problem people are talking about, this is a signal that it could be an area to focus on.

Additionally, different variations of google searches reveal articles, research papers and data on the problem area. E.g. You can google “The effects of screen time on toddlers”. The top search here was from PubMed: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10353947/.

3. Initial Market Sizing

Before going into too much detail on market segmentation and consumer research, you want to get a broad understanding of the market size. The reason for this is to discount any categories which don’t show large or high-growth markets. You can make assumptions here, just make sure you write them down in your logbook.

For speed, I would leverage Ai capabilities and also do some quick google searches.

You want to be crystal clear on:

1. Who might be your target users and buyers in the problem area you’re researching.

2. What regions you might sell into.

3. What core problem or pain point you’re solving.

Example:

Here’s an example we can run with (sticking with the effects on screen time on toddlers):

1. Toddlers are generally defined as children between the ages of 1 and 3 years old.

2. UK Beachhead with US expansion.

3. The PubMed article revealed these core problems areas:

   1. Cognitive Development

   2. Language Development​​

   3. Social-Emotional Development

Market sizing can be simply broken down into:

• TAM (Total Addressable Market).

• SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market).

• SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market).

At this stage, I’m only interested in TAM and SAM, though ChatGPT might help with the SOM but it’s not too important at this stage. This is because the SOM is the portion of the SAM your new company can realistically capture based on the business model (which comes later).

TAM: Number of Toddlers (Aged 1 to 3 years) in the UK and US OR number of parents with toddlers (Aged 1 to 3 years).

SAM: Number of Toddlers (Aged 1 to 3 years) in the UK and US who might be impacted by screen time on their development OR who are using screens (TV’s, Mobile devices etc) OR Number of parents with toddlers who are concerned with their child development due to screen time.

Notice how I brought in the parents in this exercise? They’re probably going to be the buyer. So having both sets of data is an advantage, because then you have the end user market size, and the buyer market size.

To find out the TAM, we can use the Census (Office for National Statistics) for the UK and the United States Census Bureau for the US. I.e. Number of toddlers aged 1-3 and number of parents with toddlers etc. For clarity, I downloaded the CSV files off their websites.

Finding the SAM is a lot trickier, because it entirely depends on how we quantify, but at this stage we can simplify the assumptions and build on it later. We can assume that toddlers screen-time might be predominantly through TV and Tablets. So we want to find out how many toddlers in the UK and US watch TV’s or Tablets.

Here’s what my “quick and initial” searches revealed:

UK TAM (Toddlers Aged 1-3): Approx. 1.9 Million people.

US TAM (Toddlers Aged 1-3): Approx. 11 Million people.

UK SAM (Toddlers using screen): 

• 20% of children under three use mobile phones according to a 2019 Ofcom survey.

• A 2019 Ofcom report found that 49% of children aged 3-4 use tablets.

• One study found that 40% of children have their own tablet by age 2, increasing to 60% by age 4.

Whilst the exact data isn’t immediately available, we can draw some assumptions. Based on the above, I’m going to go with 40% of 1.9million = 760,000 people.

US SAM (Toddlers using screen): Using the same assumption above (40%), we can assume the SAM for US is approximately: 4.4Million.

After some research, the Census doesn’t have the ratio of parents to children by age.

You can play with these numbers by extending and categorising the ages (i.e. 0-1, 1-3, 3-5) or including them all depending on where your product targets.

Now we want to find out the size of the “Screen Free” market (Parents that are seeking toys and activities that promote cognitive, social, and physical development in toddlers) and what the potential growth rate is.

Call me lazy, but ChatGPT is really powerful with this stuff and saves a lot of time. I crafted another deep research prompt and it provided the information below. Please note, don’t take ChatGPT’s answer on face value. Make sure you sense check the references and cross-check with other google searches, this is an example only. ChatGPT can be inaccurate and we’re only using these figures for a broad understanding to dis-count categories that are not worth the effort.

Research also noted: Spending on toddler services (childcare, classes) often matches or exceeds that on toys (UK nursery education alone is bigger than the entire toy market for all ages in the UK). Both segments are growing, driven by a common desire to provide high-quality, developmentally rich experiences for young children without resorting to screens.

This is a really key insight and will affect your market segmentation. For instance, research revealed spending on childcare and classes often exceeds toys, therefore, a key sales channel might be to sell to the childcare service providers (B2B). This would be an advantage to business growth since selling to large companies can often yield better sales volumes per unit at launch and help with traction.

The research also revealed other key insights which will be important for problem validation and identification, fueling ideas for a great product.

4. Turning Research into Problem Opportunities

With all the research you have captured in this process (and recorded in your logbook), it’s important to create a separate and focussed "potential problems” list. This is a concise list of problems you’ve identified on your research journey. Most of them might be backed up by reliable facts and figures, but some may still be assumptions - this is ok, just make sure you categorise them well to remind yourself later.

For example - A key problem from the PubMed research paper noted: 

“...there is a growing concern that screen time diminishes the quantity and quality of interactions between children and their parents, resulting in fewer chances for the child to practice and develop their language abilities.”

Concise problem statement: “Screen time diminishes the quantity and quality of interactions between children and their parents, impacting the child’s language development and abilities.”

Note: I would then go on to research this area even deeper and search for facts and figures to prove or disprove this insight. I would then refine the problem statement even further with hard facts and reliable references. E.g. “X% of children aged X - X develop speech, language, and communication difficulties leading to X.” (Reference, Date, Link) - This is important for further market sizing and any pitch decks to investors later on.

Nevertheless, given the market size and problems published online, this is a very interesting area to research and would be a key focus for idea generation and innovation.

5. Iteration Loop

If you’ve completed the steps above, it’s likely you may not have identified a high growth product opportunity. But don’t worry, this is great. It means you’re preventing a common founder mistake: failing through hope and wilful ignorance and idea confirmation bias.

Here are 4 things you can do:

1. Refine your goal statement in the category you’ve chosen.

2. Look for adjacent markets in the area you’re looking at.

3. Pivot to a new category (and therefore a different goal statement).

4. Create more goal statements.

Go back to the steps above and repeat until you’ve found a promising opportunity area.

You may also want to consider progressing with two completely different market opportunities if it’s unclear which one to roll with.

6. Wrapping Up

By now, you should have a healthy list of problems and opportunities all backed up by reliable facts, figures and references and in a market which is worth the trip. In the next stage, we will select a problem, find potential end users and buyers in the problem areas you have selected (market segmentation) and start to organise ideas.

Look out for the next Blog Post via my Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonny-marchbank/

Sign Up to My BuildLean Newsletter

To get my blog posts before anyone else and to access the free templates, sign up to my BuildLean newsletter here: https://www.riptideinnovates.com/buildlean-newsletter).

You’ll receive download links to the templates, plus some bonus tips.

Free Product Assessment

If you need help with your project, you can check out my Free Product Assessment here: https://www.riptideinnovates.com/free-product-assessment