Founders who achieve product-market fit often attribute success to surface-level features (e.g., "saves time") rather than the deep underlying physics. This flawed understanding leads them to build new products based on incorrect assumptions, dooming them to fail when they try to innovate again.
Real demand isn't a wish list; it's an active struggle. "Coping" customers are fighting a subpar solution right now, while "blocked" customers would act immediately if a viable option existed. Both represent a "spring-loaded" market ready to adopt a new product that solves their problem.
Founders mistakenly believe they can manufacture demand through better positioning or features. This is the "supply trap." True demand must exist independently before your product arrives. Your role is to find customers who are already "spring-loaded" (coping or blocked) and unleash their existing pull.
You can see a customer struggling with a slow, painful process and assume they're "coping." But they may be in a "good enough" equilibrium and not actively seeking change. True "coping" means they are ready to switch, not just experiencing friction. Only a sales test can validate this.
"Blocked" customers aren't using a bad alternative; they're doing nothing because no viable solution exists. You can't observe their struggle. Unlocking this latent demand, as Uber did for people who previously wouldn't travel, doesn't just steal market share—it creates a new market entirely.
A problem can be theoretically urgent or unavoidable, but if it is not the customer's number one priority to solve *right now*, there is no market pull. Demand exists only in the present tense. This reframes the concept of urgency into an immediate, actionable test for founders.
Since "blocked" demand is unobservable, you must ask questions that reveal it indirectly. Asking "If I spent $100M to build something for you, what problem would it solve?" forces customers to consider their most critical, unaddressed needs, bypassing their current behaviors and revealing latent demand.
When searching for "blocked" demand, it's easy to invent problems from logical first principles (e.g., "all companies want to reduce costs"). This "wish-casting" ignores the customer's actual context and priorities. True pull is never generic; it must be a specific, top-of-mind problem for a user right now.