So I recently stumbled across a problem that I think is worth solving and I already have some sort of a proof of concept, I just need to know from some more experienced people if this proof of concept is sufficient enough to take the risk:

I‘ll try to be as vague as possible with this since I don’t even have an mvp yet:

  • We found the problem when we renovated a home
  • I was looking for a local solution and It didn’t exist
  • I did, however, find that there is a company in the US that does this exact thing, it was a little disappointing since I was hoping that I might have found something that would work in both the US and in Europe where I am from, but by the looks of it the american counterpart already has a pretty strong foothold in the US and competing there would most likely not be possible (they do ~$120MM in revenue).
  • But again, a company like this does not yet exist over here so it could be worth a try, here are my objections:

  1. Average disposable income in western Europe is lower,Statista says around $82k/yr per household in Germany, 70k in sweden, 89k in Austria, 126k in Switzerland And so on. I would essentially focus my attention on the affluent Nordic and German countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland)

  2. Population size: The us has around 123 million households, vs. 2.5 in Norway, 4.8 in Sweden, 2.7 in Finland,2.8 in Denmark, 8.3 in Holland, 41.6 in Germany, 4.1 in Austria, 4.0 in Switzerland - so a total potential market of around 70.8 million households.

This is a minor objection since it’s not that big of a difference though.

  1. Startup Culture/Access to funding:

I live in Munich, Germany, which is one of the more startup-friendly cities in Europe. It is in fact one of the best cities in Europe to start a startup next to Berlin, Frankfurt and some of the Nordic capitals. It does not change the fact though that getting access to funding is significantly harder than in the US which could lead to some big issues down the line. I know that Alibaba raised capital in the US and then immediately went back to Chine to continue their work there so that could be an option maybe?

The upside is that I am not trying to reinvent or pioneer some new kind of industry that will no doubt be regulated to death by the EU authorities, I am simply trying to improve an existing one.

Some upsides for the markets are that Austria for example has a lot of hotels that could potentially use this service and in general it’s not just households that could use this but small businesses too.

This is basically my market research so far. In my eyes there is some good potential there but maybe I am overseeing something so I‘m trying to get a third opinion from outsiders. I did already talk about this to a family member and he said that he would definitely use this, but again it’s a family member so he could’ve just been nice.

Thanks for any help :)