If you’re like most early-stage founders, you have a fully-formed picture of your product in your mind. You know what you want it to look like, and what it will be able to do. The path from here to there is to design, build, polish, and sell. Then put it front of customers who (fingers crossed) will want to buy it.

Of course, if they don’t, it’s all too easy to feel disheartened and assume ‘my product doesn’t work’.

But just as there are many possible niche target users to choose from, so there are multiple ways to build your product.

The trick is to hold it lightly. Know that your first solution for your chosen niche may not be the right one - nor might the second or third. But being adaptable - ready to adjust your product/service design, key features, or even use case - will mean you can quickly pivot towards product-market fit.

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Exercise: Generate solutions and different business models

The exam question is what is the simplest way to solve my niche’s problem?

Try to detach yourself from any existing vision you might have of your product. Think as widely as you can around the problem itself:

• How are other people solving it?
• Is there more than one part to it?
• What are all the different angles you can take to solve it?

Aim for at least 10 different solutions, to make sure you’re really stepping off the well-worn path of any previous thinking you’ve done.

As well as creating different product/service ideas, this exercise will likely throw up new possibilities for business models and revenue streams, which you can explore in Step 6…

It's helpful to consider the Business Model / Revenue stream canvas below. Go round each box and list out all the different business models / solutions to the problem you're solving.

Which ones do you want to test? Why are you picking them? Is it because you are attached to the solution or that it really does help solve the problem.