Your Tech Does More Than You Think: Finding Hidden Markets

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-04

Founders often get tunnel vision with their technology. When an engineering team spends years building a solution for a specific problem in a specific market, it's easy for a startup to focus entirely on that sector. At the start, focusing on one opportunity and maximizing it makes sense, so you don't stretch the business too thin. Yet, strong growth in the European ecosystem often comes from looking beyond that starting point. Technology built for one specific sector often finds its true growth opportunity by solving problems in multiple different industries with common business problems. Finding these non-obvious verticals requires a mindset shift. It might sound odd, but instead of viewing your product through the lens of your current target customer, evaluate your technology based on what it broadly does. By breaking the solution into its core technical aspects and divorcing it from how it solves the issues of its current target sector, you can identify new growth channels that will help your startup flourish. ### Break Your Product Down to Its Basic Capabilities The first step in finding new business verticals is to look beyond what your product is currently used for and identify what it actually does. Strip away the branding, industry, and specific problem it was built to solve. What is the underlying capability? For example, imagine a software that tracks keyboard and mouse activity to identify signs of workplace fatigue. Its current application is employee wellbeing for people who spend long periods working at a desk. But the underlying technology is broader: it can detect and verify patterns in human behavior through keyboard and mouse inputs. That distinction opens up new possibilities. If the technology can identify unusual or suspicious patterns in human input, it could potentially be used in online security to stop malicious actors, in fintech to stop fraud, or even in video games to identify cheating players. The point is not to force a product into completely unrelated markets. It is to separate what the product does from the specific problem it currently solves. Once you understand that underlying capability, you can look for other industries facing problems the same technology could help solve. ### Identify Overlapping Traits Across Verticals Once you understand your product's core capabilities, the next challenge is mapping them to other sectors confronting similar operational barriers. Unrelated industries often face surprisingly similar challenges. A dashboard designed to solve a logistical bottleneck in a distributor might also solve a workflow problem in healthcare. Similarly, anti-fraud solutions in online gambling could get a second chance helping compliance risks in retail banking. To spot these overlaps, look for sectors that share three simple traits with your primary market: - **Similar data inputs:** Does the new industry collect the same kind of data your product already processes? - **Comparable risk levels:** Are the stakes and compliance requirements in the same ballpark? - **A financial incentive to solve the problem:** Is there a clear, quantifiable cost to the problem that would motivate a purchase? The opportunity often lies in recognizing that the same technical capability can solve very different problems. A technology built to solve a certain problem does not necessarily belong to the industry where it first found traction but could be relevant in many other industries. Startups that look beyond their original use case and recognize these commonalities can successfully identify entirely new markets where their existing technology can deliver more value. ### Research and Testing Are Vital To move efficiently into new verticals, startups should avoid rebuilding their core product and changing how it functions. If a vertical is right for your solution, it should adapt with minimal changes, and the best way to prove that is to run small, low-risk pilot schemes to test demand and performance. A practical approach is building simple, lightweight integrations using existing systems. Find at least one business or team in the target sector and offer a short sandbox trial. You'll need to measure a few key indicators: - How quickly does the user see value from the tool? - Does it require significant hand-holding or customization? - Is there genuine enthusiasm, or are they just being polite? > The most successful pivots into new verticals don't come from grand redesigns. They come from recognizing that the problem you already solve is more common than you thought. ### Avoid the Common Pitfalls When you start exploring new verticals, it's tempting to say yes to every opportunity that comes your way. Don't. Instead, be selective. Look for markets where your solution requires minimal adaptation and where the buyer has budget and urgency. A vertical that needs months of development work is not a vertical—it's a new product. Also, watch out for confirmation bias. When you've spent months courting a potential client in a new sector, it's easy to interpret lukewarm interest as real demand. Set clear success metrics before the pilot begins, and be honest about the results. Finally, remember that entering a new vertical doesn't mean abandoning your original market. The goal is to build a portfolio of markets that share your core technology, not to replace your first success with an unproven gamble. Smart founders keep their home base strong while testing adjacent opportunities. ### The Takeaway for Founders Your technology is likely more versatile than you give it credit for. By stripping away the industry-specific narrative and focusing on what your product fundamentally does, you can uncover markets you never considered. The key is to stay disciplined: look for overlapping traits, test with light touch pilots, and let the data guide you. When you do that, you'll find that the next big growth channel might already be hiding in plain sight.