Niche Scoring Checklist for Technical Founders

Working checklist for technical founders. Skip the reading, run the steps.

Setup

• Open a sheet. Five rows (candidates), six columns (one per criterion plus total).
• Cap the exercise at fifteen minutes.

List Candidates

• One technically exciting niche.
• Two adjacent technical niches.
• Two outside-your-usual niches.

Score Each (1-10)

• Reachability: specific channel, predictable response rate.
• Pain frequency: daily/weekly/monthly trigger.
• Existing spend: 20-minute search for adjacent vendor pricing.
• Differentiation: customer-visible mechanism, not elegance.
• Builder-fit: audience, not engineering capability.

Sanity Check Top Two

• Paragraph: why this would work.
• Paragraph: why it would not.
• If "not" is more concrete, re-score.

Pick and Move

• Highest sum wins.
• Five problem interviews scheduled this week.
• If interviews kill it, re-score five new candidates.

Anti-Patterns

• Inflated builder-fit.
• Reachability without channel.
• Three weeks of scoring.
• Differentiation by elegance.