Entering a vertical:
the demand signals we look for

Choosing which market to enter is the highest-leverage decision a studio makes — and the easiest to get wrong, because a bad market can't be out-executed. A great team in a dead market loses to a mediocre team in a live one. So before we commit a single person, we hunt for signals that the demand is real, not imagined.

The difference between a market and a mirage

Every founder can tell a compelling story about why their idea should work. Stories are cheap. What we're looking for is evidence that people are already trying to solve this problem — with their time, their money, or their workarounds — before we ever show up.

We don't want to convince a market it has a problem. We want to serve one that already knows.

The signals we actually check

• Search behaviour. Are people typing this problem into a search box? Search is intent in its purest form — a market quietly raising its hand. Rising, high-intent queries are one of the strongest signals there is.
• Existing spend. Is money already changing hands? A market where people pay — even for a clunky, overpriced, or partial solution — has proven willingness to pay. That's far more valuable than a huge audience that has never opened its wallet.
• Visible workarounds. Are people duct-taping spreadsheets, forums, and manual processes to cope? Workarounds are unmet demand made visible — a blueprint for the product that should exist.
• Beatable incumbents. Competitors are proof of demand, not a reason to stay away. We look for markets where the leaders are slow, expensive, or badly designed — where a fast, well-crafted product can take share.
• A recurring problem. Does the pain come back? A market can be real and still be a bad one for us if the problem is once-in-a-lifetime. We want problems that recur, because recurrence is what makes retention possible.

Signals we deliberately ignore

Just as important is what we refuse to be seduced by. Total addressable market size, on its own, tells us almost nothing — a huge market with no intent and no spend is a trap. Hype tells us even less; by the time a space is loud, the easy demand is usually gone. And our own enthusiasm is the most dangerous signal of all, because it feels exactly like insight.

From signals to a thesis

When enough signals line up, we write them down as a thesis — a short, falsifiable statement of who hurts, how badly, how they cope today, and why now is the moment. That thesis becomes the thing we test in validation, cheaply, before a line of production code exists. If the signals were real, the market confirms them fast. If they weren't, we find out for the price of a few landing pages — and we move on, richer for the lesson and lighter for having skipped the build.