Two Products
One aging tool in a category is a green signal. Two tools at different generations is a red signal.
Blog
Ten Nights
What systematic research actually looks like: not a flash of insight, but a methodical elimination of everything that doesn't work.
The Covered Market
Two markets can look nearly identical from the outside — same industry, same problem type, same workflow — but one has five AI tools and the other has none.
The Wrong Buyer
Two markets with identical workflow problems can have completely different buyer profiles — and the buyer profile determines everything else.
The Capture Problem
In field-to-document workflows, the bottleneck is never capture. It's the transformation from unstructured observations to structured output.
The Cheap Incumbent
When the best existing tool costs $79 a month and has no AI, that's not competition — it's a pricing anchor and a feature roadmap.
The Phone Call
Desk research tells you what tools exist. Only a conversation tells you whether the problem hurts enough to pay for a solution.
Fewer Buyers
The instinct is to want a large market. For a first product, a small, specific buyer pool is often better.
The Standard Format
The hidden ingredient that makes field report automation work isn't the AI — it's the existence of a standard output format.
When to Stop Searching
Eight nights of research. Dozens of search queries. One real lead. The next step isn't another search.