Most positioning advice tells you to pick a niche you love. That is a bad first filter. Love keeps you going; reachability keeps you fed. Start with markets you can actually get in front of.
The three tests
- Findable: can you list 100 of them by name this week, without buying anything?
- Funded: do they already pay someone for something adjacent to this problem?
- Gathered: do they collect somewhere — a subreddit, a conference, a Slack, a directory, a trade publication?
A market failing "findable" is not a market, it is a demographic. "Small businesses" fails all three. "Dental practices in Texas with more than three locations" passes all three, and you can build the list in an afternoon.
Start where you have unfair advantage
Look backwards before you look outwards. Which industry have you already shipped work in? Whose vocabulary do you already speak? A previous job in logistics is worth more than a year of cold research into fintech.
Write down every industry you have touched, then score each on the three tests. The winner is usually obvious and slightly disappointing — it is rarely the sexy one.
Try it
Pick two candidate markets and open a spreadsheet. Give yourself 20 minutes to list companies by name in each. Whichever list is longer at the buzzer is the market you can actually reach.