Example execution pack
This is a saved public example of an Edge Arena execution pack. It shows the same structure a user receives after a run, using the prompt: “I am a solo founder with roughly 10 hours per week (nights and weekends). I have three product ideas and need to pick one to build first. My hard constraints: - ~10 hrs/week, no co-founder, no investor capital - Must reach first paying customer within 90 days - Low capital: personal savings only, no debt - I have 4 years of full-stack engineering experience Options on the table: - (A) A narrow niche B2B tool for independent insurance adjusters — lightweight claim-note software that replaces their current copy-paste workflow into spreadsheets. ~5,000 adjusters in the US, clear pain, no polished SaaS incumbents at under $99/mo. - (B) A broad horizontal "project management for freelancers" platform — competes directly with Notion, Linear, and ClickUp. Large TAM, but high feature expectations and strong incumbents already at freemium. - (C) A consumer mobile app for tracking personal habit streaks with social accountability — crowded App Store category, ad-supported or freemium, depends on viral growth. Focus on: - Demand signal and how quickly I can validate it - Realistic time-to-first-revenue against my 90-day window - Competitive moat and how defensible each idea is at small scale - Founder fit given my background and solo constraints”
Saved example artifact • Your own pack will reflect your goal, launchpad, and constraints
Executing:
Build the Narrow-Niche Tool First
Use this pack like a working document — review, validate, then execute.
Niche B2B tool for insurance adjusters, first revenue in 45–60 days.
Selected from 8 ideas • Winner score 79
Build option A - the claim-note tool for independent insurance adjusters - first. The customer segment is small and reachable, the daily pain is real and un-solved at a solo-founder price point, and the MVP is narrow enough to ship in under 30 days. No incumbent is competing for this customer at under $99/mo.
If you execute consistently, you could clarify this decision in ~14 days.
boltStart here - first steps
Complete 10 discovery conversations with independent insurance adjusters within 14 days to validate the daily workflow pain and willingness to pay before writing any code.
Find and join two independent adjuster online communities (forums, Facebook groups, or LinkedIn groups) and post a brief "I am researching adjuster workflows" intro.
~2 hours
Conduct 10 short (20-minute) discovery calls focused on the current note-taking and claim-documentation workflow.
3–5 days over 2 weeks
Sketch a one-page MVP scope: the three to five workflow steps the tool must cover to replace the spreadsheet entirely for a first paying customer.
One evening after calls are complete
Why This Won
01. Execution Plan
Validate the pain, the willingness to pay, and the minimum viable scope before writing a line of code.
- 1.Join adjuster communities and post a research intro.
- 2.Schedule and complete 10 discovery calls in 14 days.
- 3.Identify the 3-5 workflow steps that are universally painful across all respondents.
- 4.Draft a one-page MVP scope and a pricing hypothesis ($49 or $99/mo).
- 5.Pre-sell: offer the first 5 respondents a founding-customer discount in exchange for a commitment to pay on launch.
Validated pain, confirmed pricing hypothesis, and at least 3 pre-commitments from real adjusters.
If fewer than 5 of 10 respondents identify the same workflow friction, the problem may be too fragmented for a single MVP to solve. That is a pivot signal, not a build signal.
Do not skip the pre-sell step. A verbal "I would use that" costs the respondent nothing. A credit-card pre-authorization costs them something - the delta is the real signal.
Ship a functional claim-note tool covering the validated workflow steps in under 30 days of part-time engineering.
- 1.Build claim-type templates for the 3 most common adjuster claim types from discovery.
- 2.Implement structured note entry with field validation (dates, amounts, parties).
- 3.Add a one-click export to PDF and CSV for carrier submission.
- 4.Deploy to a production URL with Stripe billing attached from day one.
- 5.Share the production URL with all discovery respondents immediately on launch.
Live product at a public URL with Stripe checkout, shared with 10 warm contacts on day 30.
Scope creep is the primary failure mode for solo-founder MVPs. If a feature was not explicitly named as painful in discovery, it does not go into the first version.
Attach billing from day one, not day 60. A free trial period is fine; a free product with billing added later trains customers to expect free. Every "I will add payments later" solo founder regrets it.
Close the first paid customer by day 60 and iterate on the top-requested workflow gap in the following 30 days.
- 1.Follow up personally with every discovery respondent on launch day.
- 2.Close first paying customer; document the objections that prevented others from converting.
- 3.Run a second round of 5 calls with non-converting respondents to diagnose friction.
- 4.Ship the single highest-priority workflow gap from the second round within 30 days.
First paying customer by day 60, first iteration shipped by day 90, repeat-use validated by day 90.
If no customer converts by day 60, the problem is most likely pricing or scope mismatch - not distribution. Re-run the pricing conversation before expanding the feature set.
One paying customer at $49/mo is more valuable than 100 free users. Revenue validates willingness to pay in a way that usage data never can at this stage.
02. Validation Signals
Independent insurance adjusters are a licensed, publicly listed professional community - licensing board directories and adjuster association membership lists are open-access, making the customer reachable without paid marketing
Reachability is a first-order constraint for a solo founder with no marketing budget. A customer you can find and contact directly in a weekend is categorically different from a customer who requires advertising spend to reach.
Limitation: Public directory coverage varies by state. Some states do not publish independent-adjuster license data. Verify reach in the top 5 states by adjuster population before assuming the full 5,000 is accessible.
YC and Indie Hackers post-mortems consistently identify "too broad, not enough demand signal" as the leading cause of failed solo-founder SaaS products - niche B2B tools with daily-use workflow pain outperform horizontal platforms at the solo-founder stage (Indie Hackers annual survey, 2024)
The recommendation aligns with the structural pattern that predicts solo-founder success: narrow customer, clear pain, no incumbent under $100/mo. The broad-platform option (B) matches the structural pattern that predicts failure at this stage.
Limitation: Survivorship bias applies to Indie Hackers data - the published success stories overrepresent niches that happened to work. Not every niche B2B tool succeeds; the pattern is necessary but not sufficient.
The recommendation is contingent on discovery validating the daily-workflow pain and the willingness to pay above $30/mo. Both are testable in two weeks without writing code. The confidence rating is "medium" rather than "high" because the 5,000-adjuster TAM is small enough that even strong conversion rates produce a modest absolute revenue ceiling - the ceiling is acceptable for a first product and a 90-day window, but should be evaluated honestly before investing a second year.
03. Core Strategy
Decision Framework
Three options were scored across four dimensions weighted for a solo founder with a 90-day revenue constraint: demand signal clarity (can the founder validate demand without capital?), time-to-first-revenue (how fast is the shortest realistic path to a paid customer?), competitive moat at small scale (is there a defensible wedge a solo founder can hold?), and founder fit (does the engineering background and solo constraint match the execution requirements?). The framework intentionally discounts long-horizon TAM because a 90-day window is incompatible with large-market platform plays.
Recommendation Logic
The recommendation rests on the combination of a reachable customer, a daily-use pain point, and the absence of a well-funded incumbent at this price point. Without all three, the analysis would shift. If discovery conversations reveal that adjusters are price-resistant below $30/mo, the unit economics may not support the effort - but that is a finding you can get in two weeks, not two years. The recommendation is to validate fast and build if validated, rather than to build and validate later.
04. Risks & Operator Advice
The 5,000-adjuster TAM is too small to support a sustainable solo business at $49-$99/mo even at strong conversion rates
At 2% conversion of a 5,000-person market, the ceiling is 100 customers - $4,900-$9,900 MRR. That is a viable lifestyle business but not a venture-scale outcome. The founder should enter with eyes open about the ceiling.
Mitigation: Validate the ceiling explicitly before building. If discovery reveals the 5,000-adjuster figure is accurate and willingness to pay tops out at $49/mo, the founder can make an informed decision about whether the ceiling is acceptable. Adjacent niches (public adjusters, staff adjusters at smaller carriers) can expand the TAM if the initial niche proves the model.
Adjusters have low software-adoption willingness - the spreadsheet habit may be sticky not because there is no alternative but because adjusters prefer it
A habit that is technically painful but psychologically comfortable does not convert to paid software. If adjusters describe the spreadsheet as "what I know" rather than "a problem I want solved," the demand signal is false.
Mitigation: The pre-sell step in the discovery phase is the correct mitigation. Asking an adjuster to commit a credit card before the product exists separates expressed preference from actual willingness to pay. Run this step before writing any code.
05. Immediate Next Steps
The 14-day discovery window starts today. Every day spent not talking to customers is a day borrowed from the 90-day revenue deadline.
Ten calls is the minimum sample for a reliable signal on willingness to pay. Fewer calls produce false confidence in either direction.
The pre-sell page converts the discovery conversation into a demand test in the same session - it should be ready before the first call, not after.
Defining the kill criteria before building prevents motivated reasoning during the build phase. A founder who has written "I will stop if fewer than 5 of 10 respondents name the same pain" is more likely to actually stop than one who has not.
06. Supporting Evidence
Claims
Demand
Niche B2B SaaS with daily-use workflow pain and no incumbent under $100/mo is the highest-signal combination for a solo founder at the pre-build stage (Indie Hackers annual survey, 2024).
Market
Median time to first revenue for niche B2B SaaS is 60-90 days vs 6-18 months for consumer freemium apps at the solo-founder stage (a16z consumer-vs-B2B monetization analysis, 2023).
Competitive
No polished SaaS incumbent targets independent insurance adjusters at under $99/mo; the category is served by generic spreadsheet workflows and legacy desktop software.
Evidence
Industry survey
Indie Hackers annual survey on solo-founder SaaS success patterns, 2024.
Analyst report
A16z consumer-vs-B2B monetization analysis comparing time-to-revenue at the solo and early-stage founder level, 2023.
Market research
Independent adjuster licensing board directories and adjuster association membership data used to estimate the 5,000-adjuster US market size.
System Provenance
AI-generated recommendation refined through critique. Not certainty—may contain assumptions, inaccuracies, or incomplete context. Use your judgment.