Problem Discovery Checklist: 4 Checks Before You Commit

A founder can spend weeks talking to willing people and still learn little about whether the research can reach the people who matter.

The four checks here cover access and timing: a route beyond personal introductions, a way to reach the person who authorizes spending, an event that prompts a search for change, and a count of how much access comes from the founder's own network.

These checks do not decide whether an idea is good. They help you assess whether a longer discovery round can reach the right people and situations.

Set the scope: access and timing

Use the checks to find gaps in how you will reach people, not to declare that a problem is real or worth solving.

Three can be examined as you prepare; the network-origin count should be set up before outreach and updated as contacts come in. If a check is unknown, make that uncertainty visible before you commit weeks to scheduling.

1. Can you reach people beyond your own network?

Name a route to twenty people who fit the situation you intend to investigate, without depending on personal introductions. Write down where they gather and how you could reach them.

This is an access check: it asks whether you can find people beyond those who are already close to you, not whether they will buy anything. For business audiences, the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns series gives establishment counts by industry and employment size.

It is fine to use introductions, but mark them as introductions rather than treating them as an independent route. The check fails if every route runs through someone you know. That does not show that the problem is absent; it means you have an unaddressed reach problem. Avoid quietly changing the audience to match whoever is easiest to contact.

Keep what you learn about the topic separate from what you learn about reaching people. Market validation is where that second column gets settled. The useful result is a clear account of whether your proposed access depends on personal connections.

2. Can you reach the person who releases money?

Check whether the people you plan to speak with include someone who can authorize spending, rather than only someone who experiences the problem. The practical question is whether you can reach the person who signed off on a comparable purchase, not whether you can map every role in an organization.

In the first conversations, ask who signed off on the last thing they bought like this and what that took. Record whether the person you are speaking with made that decision, can identify who did, or would have to ask somebody else for the money. The check fails if everyone you have spoken with would need someone else's approval.

A person who feels the problem may be an important source of information, but their access does not automatically give you access to the person who authorizes spending. If you cannot reach that person, treat buyer access as an open task rather than assuming a willing user can answer for the buyer. The market validation checklist covers the authorizer.

3. Can you name the event that brings the issue into focus?

Write down the event you expect to make someone look for a change. Possible triggers include a failure, a hire, an audit, a renewal, a threshold, or a rule change.

The point is to identify the situation your access route needs to reach, rather than arranging a long round of conversations around a vague idea of when people might care.

A check fails if the honest answer is that people will look for a change when they get around to it. Do not turn a guessed event into a confirmed reason to act: mark it as unknown until you have heard a concrete account.

If you cannot name an event, treat that as a gap in the research plan, not as evidence of urgency. The conversations themselves follow a customer interviews framework.

This check is about timing and context for reaching people. A named event alone does not tell you how often it happens or establish that someone will switch. Keep the trigger specific enough that you can tell which situations your planned conversations are meant to cover.

4. Can you see how much access comes from your network?

Set up a simple count of how many people came through your own network, and keep it current as contacts arrive. Do not wait until the end of a long round to ask where your participants came from.

If most came through your network, the check fails: you have learned about a convenient access path, but have not resolved whether you can reach people beyond it.

Keep two separate notes: what you learned about the issue and what you learned about reach. The count is not a score for the idea. It makes the source of your access visible, so a list assembled through personal introductions is not mistaken for evidence that you can reach people through another route.

There is no need to invent a percentage that turns the count into a pass. The condition to watch for is whether most contacts came through your own network. If so, leave that limitation in the record and work on access before treating the conversations as a broad view of the people you hope to understand.

Use the checks to decide what to do next

Put the four checks on a short preparation sheet: the route to people, access to the person who authorizes spending, the expected trigger event, and the count of network-sourced contacts.

For each, note what is known, what remains unknown, and the next action.

This keeps an access gap from being mistaken for a finding about the problem itself. A missing route calls for work on reach, and advisers are one place to start: the SBA says its SBDC programs deliver individualized business advising to pre-venture entrepreneurs.

An unknown approver calls for a way to contact that person. An unnamed trigger calls for more clarity about the situation you intend to investigate. A network-heavy set of contacts calls for a route beyond personal introductions.

These are different tasks; do not hide them under a single judgment that the interviews went well or badly. Slips to avoid are covered in problem discovery mistakes.

Passing the four checks shows that your research plan can get to the people and situations it needs. It does not establish that the idea will work. For the broader discovery sequence, see problem discovery; whether the time and cost fit your constraints is a separate founder readiness question.