Where to Play — Market Opportunity Navigator

Credits: Marc Gruber & Sharon Tal, Where to Play — wheretoplay.co. Original worksheets available there free (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0); this skill teaches the method and links to the source — get the printable canvases from their site.

Core definitions: a market opportunity = any combination of application + customer. A market = a group of people and the job they are trying to get done.

Worksheet 1 — Generate your Market Opportunity Set

1. List the venture's core abilities / technological elements, characterized by functions and properties, described generally — independent of your envisioned product. (This is why the Navigator works with NO idea yet: start from what you can do.)
2. Ask: which applications can these abilities offer? Which customers may need each? Zoom in — segment each customer group further.
3. Each application + customer combo goes into the set. Abilities are usually [FACT] (the founder knows what they can build); every proposed combo is [ASSUMPTION].

Worksheet 2 — Evaluate attractiveness (one per opportunity)

Rate each factor Low / Mid / High / Super High — every rating needs a stated basis (source URL, interview evidence, or explicitly "provisional [ASSUMPTION]"). Never rate on vibes.

POTENTIAL — Compelling reason to buy (unmet need; effective solution; better than current solutions) · Market volume (current size; expected growth) · Economic viability (margins; customers' ability to pay; stickiness)

CHALLENGE — Implementation obstacles (product development; sales & distribution; funding) · Time to revenue (development time; product-to-market gap; sale-cycle length) · External risks (competitive threat; 3rd-party dependencies; adoption barriers)

Combine → Overall Potential × Overall Challenge → place on the Attractiveness Map: Gold Mine (high potential / low challenge) · Moon Shot (high/high) · Quick Win (low/low) · Questionable (low/high).

Worksheet 3 — Agile Focus Strategy

I. Choose a Primary Market Opportunity from the map. II. Assess other attractive opportunities for relatedness to it:

• Product relatedness — shared technology, resources, networks
• Market relatedness — shared customer values/benefits, sales channels, word-of-mouth
• Growth option — related opportunity that adds value on top of the primary
• Backup option — attractive opportunity that does NOT share the primary's major risks (your change-of-direction insurance)

III. Keep at least one Backup and one Growth option open; pursue now / keep open / place in storage for everything else (the Agile Focus Dartboard). Focused ≠ single-option: a smart portfolio de-risks the focus.

Output

The three worksheets filled (markdown tables fine), each rating with its basis label, a recommended primary opportunity stated as application + customer + why, the agile-focus portfolio — and crucially: which UNKNOWNs, if answered differently, would flip the recommendation. Route those to /secondary-research and /customer-discovery.

Ledger discipline (v2): reference Belief Ledger IDs ([A4], [F7]) for every claim; propose new/changed items in a closing "Ledger delta" section rather than restating claims — restated claims drift.

Fill-in templates: TEMPLATES.md in this skill's folder — copy the structures into your project's discovery/ and fill with labels.