The Whose-Move Test: A Framework for Market Readiness
Updated
Knowledge on this page was mainly distilled from You're Almost Never Too Late to a Market.
The Whose-Move Test is a simple diagnostic for distinguishing between a market that is crowded (workable) and one that is premature (not workable yet). It was introduced in the essay "You're Almost Never Too Late to a Market."
How to Run It
- Write down everything standing between you and your first hundred paying customers.
- Mark each item as my move (something you could act on this quarter) or world's move (someone else has to change first).
- Read the list. If blockers are mostly your moves, the market is late in the workable sense. If the critical blockers are the world's moves, you are early, whatever the calendar says.
Q&A
What counts as a 'my move' blocker?
A 'my move' blocker is any obstacle you can act on this quarter: choosing a segment, building a feature, setting a price, picking a distribution channel, hiring a key role, or changing your positioning. These are decisions within your control, even if they are difficult or uncertain.
What counts as a 'world's move' blocker?
A 'world's move' blocker is something that requires external change you cannot force: customers adopting a new behavior, infrastructure being built, a technology becoming cheap enough, regulation shifting, or willingness to pay emerging for a category that does not exist yet. You can nudge these at the margin, but you cannot make them happen on your schedule.
How does the test apply to Webvan versus Instacart?
For Webvan in 1996, the blocker list included smartphones (not invented), gig labor (not normalized), and grocery stores willing to serve as fulfillment centers (not interested). All three were world's-move items. By 2012, the world had built every one of those pieces, so Instacart's blocker list was almost entirely my-move items like city selection and shopper recruitment.
Can a market have both types of blockers at once?
Yes, and most do. The test is not binary. What matters is where the critical blockers fall. If your must-have preconditions are world's-move items, no amount of execution on my-move items will overcome them. Focus on whether the blockers that would kill the business entirely are yours to solve or not.
How is this different from standard competitive analysis?
Standard competitive analysis counts competitors and maps features. The Whose-Move Test ignores competitor count entirely and instead asks what stands between you and revenue. A market with fifty competitors but only my-move blockers is more approachable than a market with zero competitors but world's-move blockers everywhere.