Commercial Evidence Atlas

Questions for your own business

The report ends with six commercial questions a founder can use immediately. Each one below lists the examples that raise it, so you can see the question at work before you ask it of your own business.

1. Who has demonstrated the problem?

   Can we point to specific buyers or users who independently described a costly, frequent or urgent problem? How were they selected? What would contradict our hypothesis?

   Examples that raise it

   No example shows this directly: the decks are read for what they disclosed, not for how the founders found the problem.

2. What customer action has actually occurred?

   Was there an interview, waitlist sign-up, pilot agreement, activation, repeat use, payment or renewal? Each action has a different meaning. Which one do we currently have?

   Examples that raise it

   • Blurbiz
   • Waterplan
   • Storyboard
   • Kamino
   • Revolut
   • Bliss.ai
   • Castle
   • Standard Treasury

3. What money did the company earn?

   If we use a financial figure, is it revenue recognised by our company, money passing through the platform, contract value, gross profit, forecast or an annualised run rate? What is the time period, currency and source?

   Examples that raise it

   • Blurbiz
   • Waterplan
   • VideoPeel
   • iGrow
   • Butlr
   • Tallyfy
   • Shippo
   • Bill Trim
   • Infraspeak
   • mcSquares
   • Mero Technologies
   • Flowtab
   • Bliss.ai
   • Castle

4. Do customers repeat the action?

   Are they coming back, renewing, expanding or buying again? If we are too early to measure that, what experiment would create the first observable repeat signal?

   Examples that raise it

   • Infraspeak
   • mcSquares
   • Flowtab
   • Bliss.ai
   • Castle

5. Can we describe how to reach the next buyer?

   What is the customer's trigger, where can we access them, what message earns a response and what is the next commercial action? Can we test this with a modest number of reachable buyers?

   Examples that raise it

   • mcSquares
   • ProcureNow (Govlist)
   • Laoshi
   • Flowtab
   • Bliss.ai

6. What is still unproven, and what is the smallest useful next test?

   Rather than filling a missing slide with assumptions, identify the single uncertainty most likely to change the decision to build, sell, spend or raise.

   Examples that raise it

   Every example raises this question.

From business claim to next commercial test

1. Business claim: What you believe, have built, claim and propose about the buyer, problem, offer or market.
2. Market response: What somebody outside the founding team actually said, did, signed, paid or repeated.
3. What an investor can reasonably understand: What those two establish for a funding audience, and the most important question they leave open.
4. Next useful commercial test: The smallest ethical, affordable action that could strengthen or change the decision.

What to test next depends on what you have already demonstrated

• Reliable revenue and retention data, labelled poorly: communicate the existing evidence accurately.
• A valuable problem, but no direct buyer observations: the next task is not a better slide. It is an encounter with actual potential customers.
• Enthusiastic interviewees but no purchase: test willingness to commit.
• Pilots but no renewal or repeat behaviour: test repeated value, by looking at retention, value delivered and the conditions of a second purchase.
• Customer evidence but no path to more customers: test access and acquisition economics.
• Paid customers but unknown acquisition cost: the commercial unknown is no longer whether people will pay at all.

Read Section 11 in the reportRead Section 12 in the report22 Founder Questions