Before you Build: How do you Know if your Product Idea is Worth Pursuing?
A structured approach with 20 questions to assess product opportunities and avoid costly mistakes.
When Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia first launched Airbnb in 2007, it wasn’t an instant success. In fact, they faced major product-market fit issues that could have killed the company before it took off.
They originally thought the problem was a lack of affordable hotels during conferences, but then realized the true problem was
travelers crave affordable and local experiences beyond traditional hotels.
hosts had extra space but no easy way to safely and conveniently monetize it.
The story highlights a critical lesson for product leaders: misidentifying the problem and even more critically, failing to accurately assess the product opportunity can be costly and sometimes fatal. That’s why a structured approach to evaluating product opportunities—before investing heavily—can make a huge difference.
Let’s break down the core questions you should ask before major product investments. Note: these general questions are meant for product leaders to have a starting point to assess and articulate. In product coaching sessions, I ask more tailored questions as every situation is unique.
The problem and the target market
Exactly what problem will this solve?
Exactly who is your target audience?
Who are they?
What are their top 3 pain points? (this may not be what your solution solves. Think big picture. Think: of all the things they need to do their job well and enjoy their work, what would they say are their top 3 pain points.)
How big of a pain is the problem to your users?
How confident are you about those assessments from 1 and 3?
What do these users view as alternatives? (note: this may not be a software solution.)
How frequently do they need this problem solved?
How likely would they be to switch to your solution? (if your users are in biotech, chances are they’ve spent decades training to be skeptical—that’s what makes them great at science. The same skepticism might apply to your solution. This means you not only need to understand your users deeply but also adopt an “outside in” approach, not just “inside out”. Shift the focus to their perspective: what do they need to know to decide to try your solution?)
What are they doing today without your solution?
The opportunity
How big is the opportunity?
Why are you best suited to pursue this?
Why is the market window now? (e.g. what would happen if you did this in a year?)
What’s your go-to-market strategy? In other words, how will you get this solution to the market?
The business
How will you measure success?
How will you make money from it?
What are the criteria for failure?
What factors are critical to success? What are the solution requirements?
The process
What’s the cheapest possible way to test your understanding of the problem and the solution with real users? (instead of releasing the feature and observing the feedback, can you test your understanding without actually developing the feature?)
What are the specific user personas?
What are their end-to-end user journeys?
The decision
Given all of the above, is the recommendation go or no-go?
Note: this list is my adapted version of the SVPG recommendations.
Conclusion
Next time you are making a major product investment, apply these questions and reflect on whether to proceed. These are also good context to give your teams to they understand the Why behind a new strategy, vision, or product idea.
If you feel like you have done this exercise but didn’t see the result, or you aren’t even sure the exercise made an impact, it’s a good time to get an outside perspective. Sometimes it’s hard to know whether you’ve gone deep enough in your answers, and some thought partnerships can help with that. Get in touch! I also offer training and coaching on both assessing the opportunity and making sure your teams understand the investment. Get in touch for a free consultation.