There is something interesting that happens when we fall in love with an idea. It works a lot like falling in love with a person. Your vision gets a little blurry. You start noticing everything that confirms what you already feel, and of course , you are ignoring everything that does not fit your emotional state and breaks your ideal picture.
I noticed this pattern twice in two days. Both times it was about a market gap. Both times the gap looked like an open door. And both times, when you looked more carefully, the door was open for a reason.
Story one: the beautiful research package
Yesterday I was putting together portfolio materials for my Upwork profile. I wanted to include a case study from a project I worked on a couple of years ago — a B2C marketplace. Before the product work started, the company had commissioned a marketing research package from an external consulting firm. Slides, charts, market sizing, competitor maps. It looked confident and professional.
I had always felt something was slightly off about it. So yesterday I took another look, and asked for a second opinion.
The conclusion was this: the research told the CEO exactly what they wanted to hear. The market is growing fast. Competitors are all focused on B2B. The B2C segment is underserved. Therefore — opportunity.
What the research never actually did was prove that B2C consumers wanted this product (at some points the research simply cited itself as a source), were willing to pay for it, and could be acquired at a cost that made the business viable. The gap in the competitive landscape was presented as evidence of demand.
But an empty shelf does not mean people are hungry for what you want to put on it.
Now I know that this pattern has a name – confirmation bias by commission. It is what happens when an analyst — consciously or not — builds a coherent argument around the conclusion the client already believes. The research looks rigorous because it has citations and percentages. But rigor in presentation is not the same as rigor in reasoning.
The consultant delivered confidence, not doubt. And confidence is often exactly what a founder wants to buy.
Story two: the healthy food delivery idea in Tbilisi
Today I visited an acquaintance here in Tbilisi. She runs a small home cooking business — food prepared and delivered to order. She is good at it, and she is thinking about expanding into something more structured: a daily meal plan delivery service. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Calculated macros and calories. Healthy eating, fully handled, so the customer does not need to think about food at all.
Her reasoning made sense to her. There used to be a major player in this space in Tbilisi. That company recently shut down after a food safety scandal — customers got sick, the business collapsed, and the niche is now empty.
Empty niche. No competition. Obvious need. Sound familiar?
But when you think carefully about who in Tbilisi would actually pay for a daily healthy meal plan — the picture gets more complicated. The most likely buyers are expats and digital nomads with higher income who do not want to navigate Georgian markets and care about nutrition. Tech workers in their thirties who want to eat well without spending time on it. Maybe some local young professionals who follow international health trends.
The problem is that this market is smaller than it looks. The large wave of expats that arrived in Tbilisi after 2022 is not as big as it was. Living costs have risen sharply and some people have moved on. Local Georgians have a deeply rooted food culture — and grandmothers are fierce competition for any meal subscription service. The segment that would genuinely pay a premium for calculated macros and daily delivery is real, but it is niche, it is not growing fast, and it has no obvious path to scale.
My acquaintance is optimistic and energetic, and those are real strengths. But right now she is looking at an empty shelf and feeling “hunger”.
The same pattern, two very different contexts
One story involves a professional consulting firm with market data and beautifully formatted slides. The other involves a person with a good eye for local opportunity and genuine entrepreneurial instinct. The confirmation bias works exactly the same way in both cases.
It is not about intelligence or experience. It is about what happens when you want something to be true badly enough. You start collecting evidence that supports the conclusion and unconsciously filtering out the evidence that complicates it.
What this reminded me
Well, I wrote about it because the first story gave me the insight. The insight was so strong that reality showed me another story today (or my brain was ready to understand it).
It reminded me of “Survivorship bias” which impressed me deeply about 10 years ago. Similar mechanics, but this time the trap was not about survivors — it was about empty niche.
So here is my reminder for next time I spot an empty niche :
Is this gap empty because nobody has solved it yet — or because everyone who tried discovered the demand was not actually there?
A note on being wrong
I could be wrong about the market. What I wrote about the expat population in Tbilisi is partly intuition, partly observation, and partly quick research — not a validated study.
That is also the point. Honest analysis acknowledges what it does not know. The best advisor in the room is not the one who confirms your excitement (but they will be the most suuceful, popular and wellpaid …just kidding) .
In theory , I believe, the analyst is the one who helps stress-test the idea, but not all of clients are really ready to pay for it, right? )))
Leave a Reply