Chris Donnelly presents C.O.D.E., a four-step framework to validate business ideas: check consumer trends via KPMG and Google Trends, clarify your unique solution, mine Reddit and Facebook groups to confirm customers feel the pain, and size the market to ensure it's worth pursuing.
I've developed a framework called CODE, and I want you to think about this when you're starting to plan what sector and what business you want to create. So the first part of CODE is consumer trends. You could look at KPMG, Deloitte, Accenture, who pay thousands of people every single year to create incredible consumer reports on how consumers have changed behaviors. They're buying new things, they're using new technology. Another way is Google Trends. You just want to try and spot small micro changes that you can build and wrap a business around. The second part of CODE is opportunity. Think about why your solution is quite clearly gonna solve an opportunity for a business or an individual. And this brings us onto demand validation, which is you looking at subreddits, forums, Facebook pages, and looking at customers talking about their pains, their challenges. You're seeing that the demand already exists. This brings us to economic sizing. Think about building in a space that is big enough that if you capture only a fraction of the market, you can still build a big business. I want you to think about rising tide. I want you to think about pain points. I want you to think about, can I validate this idea? And is this idea big big enough that if I captured just a small fraction of the market, I'm gonna build a big business for myself.
