I've watched a lot of first-time founders start (and stall). The idea is almost never the problem. It's usually one of these three:

1. "Who exactly is this for?"

If your answer is "anyone who has this problem," you don't have a customer yet — you have a hypothesis. Name a person. Not a demographic, a person you could DM right now.

2. "What are they doing today instead of using my thing?"

Every product competes with a workaround, not just other products. Spreadsheets, a competitor's free tier, doing nothing. If you can't name the workaround, you don't understand the problem well enough to sell against it.

3. "Would I pay for this if I weren't the founder?"

Harsh, but ask it every week. Founders fall in love with the build and forget to check if the market ever asked for it.

I started The Founders Table because I kept seeing smart people get stuck on these same three questions with nobody to bounce them off of. If you're building something right now — pre-idea or post-launch — drop what you're working on below. Happy to poke holes or point you somewhere useful.