Is this market worth being in?

• market
• segment
• vertical
• industry
• who we sell to
• tam
• niche

• Who pays, and is that the same person who feels the pain?
• What does a typical {unit} pay in year one, and what could it pay in year three?
• How long is the {cycle}, and is it shortening?
• How many buyers of this profile actually exist in reach?
• Does the buyer have a budget line for this already, or must one be created?

• average value per {unit}
• {cycle} length across the last ten deals
• win rate by segment
• expansion or repeat revenue from existing {unit}s
• count of reachable buyers of this profile

• Structurally low willingness to pay in this segment
• A {cycle} too long for the cash the company holds
• No natural path from a small first purchase to a larger one

• If
  The product works but value per {unit} is small and cannot grow within the account
  Then
  The constraint is the market, not the product. Test an adjacent segment before improving anything.
• If
  Win rate is healthy but the {cycle} is long and cash is short
  Then
  The market may be right and the commercial architecture wrong — look at payment terms before abandoning the segment.
• If
  Buyers repeatedly ask for the same adjacent capability and would pay more for it
  Then
  The market is fine; the offer is under-scoped.

Run ten qualified conversations in one adjacent segment with the current product and the current price. Change nothing else.

Read after 21 days.

• At least three of ten reach a priced proposal
• Average proposed value per {unit} is materially higher than the current base
• {cycle} in the adjacent segment is no longer than today's

• Fewer than two of ten reach a priced proposal — the adjacent segment is not better, it is just new
• The adjacent segment requires product work before anyone will look at it

• The adjacent segment out-performs on value and cycle → Move acquisition effort, keep serving existing customers, do not rebuild the product yet.
• Both segments perform the same → The constraint is not the market. Re-run constraint diagnosis.

Aury can carry out: read company, prepare research brief, prepare outreach, file memory. Specialists involved: research, strategy, sales.

Your approval: Any outreach to real prospects is sent by the founder, not by Aurygine.

Holds when the product demonstrably works for someone and the difficulty is commercial rather than technical.

Ten conversations detect a large difference, not a small one. A segment can also look weak because the company has no credibility in it yet, which is a distribution problem wearing a market costume.

A working product can still be in the wrong market: willingness to pay, cycle length, depth of the account and room to expand price are all separate from whether the software runs.

• Sourced operator experience: Founder/operator case study analysed inside Aurygine — bootstrapped B2B software company, 2026
• Aurygine synthesis: Aurygine synthesis across founder journeys

Confidence: medium. Last reviewed 2026-08-25. Your company's own recorded results override this playbook whenever the two disagree.