How to spot gaps and prove there’s a need before you build

If someone’s willing to pay you before you’ve built anything, you’re probably onto something.

By Kathleen Webber, LiveRem co-founder.

I started my first business when I was ten, though I didn’t realise it was a business at the time. I got talking to a woman at the park where I was walking my new dog, and she asked if I ever walked other dogs. Truthfully I never had, but I said yes. She said she would pay me $20 a walk every day after school.

No plan, no flyer, no pitch deck. Just a yes, a handshake, and a time.

That one walk turned into a handful, then a dozen. I saved every dollar and eventually booked myself a trip to Sydney, and later to Europe. (Still not sure how I convinced my parents to let me go alone at 15, but that’s another story.) Looking back, that was my first lesson in entrepreneurship:

If someone’s willing to pay you before you’ve built anything, you’re probably onto something.

Since then, I’ve started a few more ventures:

● Spray tanning at uni (I used some leftover dog walking money to buy the gear)

● A Christmas tree delivery business (noticed a gap in the market in Epsom and so we partnered with a local retirement village to use their prime space in exchange for free trees and visits to the old people)

● ResolvePay (providing cost-effective, automated compliance support with Holidays Act compliance to any organisation, from small not-for-profits to large NZX listed companies)

● And most recently, LiveRem, a platform for real-time salary insights to give leaders confidence in any conversation about pay.

Every time, the pattern was the same: spot the pain, talk to people, test fast, and only build once people said, “I need this.”