Stop Chasing Trends. Start Here Instead.
Stop Chasing Trends. Start Here Instead.
Aron Meystedt
August 11, 2026
Hey, Aron here.
This might be the one thing that is holding your idea back from becoming something. Proximity.
We are seeing the founders that move forward on our platform are closest to the customer, problem and distribution. I explain below. Domain expertise is the biggest factor in forward progress that we track. Many of us are chasing trends. Let me show you what our data says you should be doing. I think this might help.
Build a digital marketing strategy that drives better results.
HubSpot Academy's Digital Marketing Certification covers SEO, email, paid ads, social, and AI — in just over 3 hours, at zero cost. Join 200,000+ professionals who have advanced their career with HubSpot Academy. Get started today.
Bullet-point-style, so you can quickly scan this and put it into practice.
Only 36.7% of our founders have a clear understating of who their customer is.
Unclear distribution is the #1 misalignment signal that we track.
Strong ideas feature a specific customer, a clear daily pain and lived experience.
Weak ideas seem to have “everyone” as a customer base, no domain expertise and a vague aspiration of an idea.
The #1 reason ideas don’t move forward (according to our data) is weak founder-problem proximity.
Another key failure point is having an unclear next step, because the founder doesn’t know the audience and their needs well enough.
Those that move forward narrow the scope of their project right before they build. These people appear to come in with their customer and problem figured out, they just need to simplify their next steps.
The founders that move fastest don’t have better ideas. They have proximity.
Your expertise, relationships, and domain knowledge are worth more than any idea that came from reading a trend report.
That’s why our idea generator is a perfect place to start.
It is built around you, your market and your own expertise.
Simply answer a couple of questions:
Our AI will give you 10 business ideas and score them.
And you’ll see a Build This Idea button which passes along a ready-to-go prompt to Base44.
There you can get a mockup of your idea to see how it feels!
→ Try the Business Idea Generator.
Your next idea should probably come from the market you already know best, not the hottest trend or the biggest TAM.
Happy to discuss your big idea, anytime.
Aron Meystedt
Chief Data Nerd - ValidatorAI
👬 Let’s connect on LinkedIn!
👉 Is My Idea Any Good? Let's Find Out!
Our AI scores your idea, identifies your customer, and tells you exactly what to do next — free.