All tools Step 2 of 12
Deep Secondary Market Research
Know the market before you take up a stranger’s time
Live research into who already has your problem, what they use instead, and where those alternatives fail them — with citations throughout.
Free to start · 30 credits on signup · No credit card · Your idea stays yours
What Deep Secondary Market Research looks like
The tool as it appears inside the ToolSuite, shown here on an example company.
Deep Secondary Market Research: ShelfSense
Researched against the live internet, with sources attached.
The real incumbent. Free, familiar, and already in the workflow — which makes it the hardest thing to displace.
Priced and built for chains. Independents describe them as unusable and unaffordable.
Free, but written to sell the distributor’s own products. Grocers know it and resent it.
Example content, shown on an invented company. Your own analysis uses your idea.
Three things it does
- 01
Live web research
Searches the current internet against your specific idea, not a training cut-off.
- 02
The real alternative, named
Usually a spreadsheet or a habit rather than a competitor — which is the harder thing to displace.
- 03
Assumptions challenged
Pointed deliberately at what your idea is betting on, with the contradicting evidence attached.
What it lets you do
- Find the competitor you had not found, in an afternoon rather than a launch
- Arrive at customer interviews already knowing what is public, so you spend them on what is not
- Cite a source in an investor conversation instead of asserting a number
Founders routinely discover their real competitor is a habit rather than a product. Learning that from public evidence costs an afternoon; learning it from a failed launch costs a year.
Where it sits
Each tool uses what the last one established. See all 13 tools in order.
Common questions
What is secondary market research for startups?
Secondary research is analysis of evidence that already exists — forum posts, reviews, reports, public complaints — as opposed to primary research, where you speak to people directly. It is the cheaper pass, and it is what makes the expensive pass worth doing, because it tells you which questions are still genuinely open.
How is this different from asking ChatGPT about my market?
A general chat tool answers from what it absorbed during training and tends toward agreement. This researches the live internet against your specific idea, returns citations you can open, and is pointed deliberately at the assumptions your idea rests on rather than at a flattering summary of your market.
Does this replace customer interviews?
No, and it is positioned before them on purpose. It tells you what is already knowable in public so your interviews can spend their time on what is not. Five later tools in the sequence exist specifically to get you talking to real people.
Know the market before you take up a stranger’s time
Create a free ToolSuite account and Deep Secondary Market Research is there, along with the other twelve tools.
Create your free accountFree to start · 30 credits on signup · No credit card required