Quick background: about 10 years in B2B SaaS sales, co-founder of a B2B SaaS.
I see a lot of posts about validating ideas and understanding potential, so I wanted to share from experience what works great as a starting point.
These are a great exercise you can do as desk research, even before you talk to actual people.
It's very rare to enter a market with no competition at all. It can happen if you're a true innovator or tapping into something new, but in most cases, no competition means the pain isn't big enough for people to pay to solve it.
So research the competition. If you find it, that's a good sign, it means people are already paying for solutions.
One of the best signals of all: no competition in your market, but similar companies in other markets. This usually means you've discovered a gap in your own market.
2) People are building their own workarounds
For example, they're building complex Excel files, setting up Notion, vibe-coding something to hold it together. That means the pain is big enough for them to invest their own time into solving it. It usually also means they're spending time maintaining it, and sometimes paying money keeping it alive.
In those cases people are usually willing to pay to buy their time back and get a better solution.
3) There are people employed to do the job
If you have a solution that can replace a person, or a big part of their work, in most cases the company will pay for it. Businesses are always looking to cut costs, and even though it doesn't sound nice, if you can deliver the same outcome for less than the cost of the role, that's something you can sell.
4) People are actively looking for a solution
Go where your potential customers hang out and read what they ask. "How do I solve X", "is there a tool that does Y", one-star reviews of existing products saying "I wish it did Z", or "looking to hire someone for this" threads. When people are actively hunting for a fix, that's real demand you can see for yourself, before you've built a thing
5) Competitors are paying to get customers
It's one thing for competitors to exist, it's another for them to be running ads. If companies are spending money to acquire customers in a market, there's real money in it and customers worth winning. You don't need their exact budget, just seeing them advertise consistently tells you the economics work for someone
Bonus point: you can also check their ads in the Meta Ads Library.
This will help you understand what they communicate and give you ideas for your own messaging.
Important: don’t start building immediately after checking those 5 steps.
Having conversations with real buyers to validate the idea is a crucial step. This exercise just gives you a great starting point.
Happy to hear your experiences.