RaiseWise
Founder Assessment
Section A · Problem & Market
RaiseWise · Investor Readiness · Section A

What does your company look like through an investor's eyes?

Answer each question in your own words — give us the actual data, not the polished version. Gunika reviews every submission personally and responds with a specific read on your positioning. No generic feedback.

6
Questions
~10
Minutes
3–5
Days to feedback
💡 This is not a scored quiz. You won't see a number at the end. Gunika reads your responses and sends a personalised note on your Problem & Market positioning — what's investor-grade, what needs work, and what to do about it.
What you'll cover in Section A
A1Who has this problem and what it actually costs them
A2How you came to understand this problem
A3Why existing options are structurally broken
A4What finally triggers someone to act on this
A5Your market size — methodology, not just the number
A6The specific forces that make this the right moment
A
Problem & Market
How clearly can you articulate the problem — who feels it, when, and what it actually costs them.
1 of 6
A1
Describe the problem your startup solves. Be specific about who faces it, when it happens, and what it costs them.
Don't describe your solution yet. Just the problem — as it exists in someone's life today, before you showed up.
What a strong answer looks like
A wheat farmer in Haryana harvests 8 tonnes in October but has no way to store it locally — the nearest cold storage is 40km away and charges ₹3/kg/month. He either sells immediately at the lowest seasonal price, or pays for storage he can't verify is working. Last year he sold at ₹14/kg. Neighbours with storage access sold at ₹21/kg two months later. The difference was ₹56,000 on the same crop.

Notice: a real person, a real moment, a real number. The problem exists whether or not the solution does.
Who is the person? When does the pain hit? What does it actually cost them — in time, money, or opportunity?
A1+
Who exactly feels this — and how would you describe them?
This could be a CFO, a homemaker, a Gen Z student, a farmer, a daily wage worker. Don't limit yourself to professional titles.
Who are they? What does their day look like? How often does this problem show up for them?
A
How You Know This Is Real
Not just how many people you talked to — but what you did with what you learned.
2 of 6
A2
How did you come to understand this problem? Walk us through the research — formal or informal, numbers or lived experience.
There's no single right answer here. A founder who personally lived this problem for 10 years knows something a survey of 500 people won't catch. What matters is that you've gone deep.
Select all that apply
Lived it personally
Direct interviews / conversations
Surveys or structured feedback
Worked in the industry
Secondary / desk research
Ran a pilot or prototype
Heard it from people close to me
Academic or institutional research
actual conversations — write 0 if none
Be specific. Not "potential customers" — name the type of person, their context, how you reached them.
A2+
What's the most surprising thing you learned — and what did you do differently because of it?
If your understanding of the problem today is exactly what it was when you started, that's worth reflecting on. The best founders are changed by what they find.
A
Why Existing Options Fail
Not why yours is better — why theirs is structurally broken.
3 of 6
A3
Name the 2–3 things your customer does today instead of using you. Then explain specifically why they fail — not why yours is better, but why theirs is structurally broken.
"Structurally broken" means something the incumbent cannot fix without undermining their own business model, distribution, or customer base. "Expensive" is not structural. "Their margin depends on keeping this manual" is.
Name specific tools, services, manual habits, or people they hire. Not categories — actual names or behaviours.
A3+
Why can't the strongest existing option just build what you're building?
Pick all the reasons that genuinely apply — then rate how confident you are in each one.
Their unit economics don't allow it
They lack the data access we have
Their distribution model is different
Regulatory or licensing barrier
Their existing customers would object
Legacy architecture or technical debt
They're not focused on this segment
Honestly, they could — we need to move faster
Hypothesis — I believe this but haven't verified it with evidence Proven — customers have told me this, or I've seen an incumbent try and fail
A
Urgency & Trigger
What makes someone stop tolerating this problem and actually do something about it?
4 of 6
📌 This is often what separates a real market from a wishful one. A problem people live with for years without acting on is very different from one with a clear trigger — a deadline, a loss, a moment of failure — that makes them finally move.
A4
What finally makes someone act on this problem? What's the trigger — the moment when tolerating it stops being an option?
Think about your actual customers or people you've spoken to. What happened right before they started looking for a solution?
Select all that apply to your customer
A specific financial loss or mistake
A regulatory or compliance deadline
A business milestone (hiring, funding, scaling)
A life event (illness, marriage, job change)
Hitting a volume threshold where the old way breaks
Awareness — they didn't know a solution existed
Social proof — someone they know switched
No clear trigger — they're still tolerating it
What happened to a specific person or customer right before they needed this? Even one real story is more useful than a general answer.
what they pay today to half-solve this
hours per person affected
A
Market Size
Walk us through how you got to the number — not just the number itself.
5 of 6
A5
What's your market size — and how did you actually calculate it?
Investors don't trust top-down market sizes. What they want to see is whether you've actually counted your customers. "India's X market is $10B" tells them nothing. "There are 800,000 kirana stores in Maharashtra, we're targeting 10% in year 1 at ₹1,200/month" tells them something.
TAM (Total Addressable Market) — Everyone who has this problem, globally or nationally. The ceiling, not the target.

SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market) — The portion of TAM you can realistically reach given your geography, language, distribution model, and product capabilities right now.

SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) — The share of SAM you can realistically capture in the next 2–3 years. This is your actual operating plan, not a percentage of a big number.

The most credible market sizes come from counting actual units: number of companies × average contract value, or number of people × willingness to pay. Work bottom-up if you can.
total addressable
serviceable addressable
realistic capture
"We counted 18,000 mid-market manufacturers × ₹8L ACV × 3% conversion = ₹432 Cr SAM" is useful. "India's supply chain market is $15B" is not.
A
Why Now
What has changed — in policy, market, technology, or behaviour — that makes this the right moment?
6 of 6
A6
What are the forces working in your favour right now — that either didn't exist or weren't strong enough in 2021?
The strongest answers name specific things that shifted — a regulation that passed, an infrastructure that went live, a behaviour that normalised, a cost that dropped. Not "digital adoption is growing." What exactly changed, and when?
Select the ones that genuinely apply — not aspirationally, but actually
Policy / regulation change
New infrastructure (UPI, ONDC, ABDM, etc.)
Technology cost drop (AI, cloud, sensors)
Shift in customer behaviour or expectations
Growing awareness of the problem
Industry formalisation or compliance pressure
Demographic shift (Gen Z, rural internet, etc.)
Post-COVID behaviour change that stuck
A large incumbent exiting or weakening
Name the thing. Name when it happened or started. Explain why it creates the opening for you — not just for the sector generally. If the tailwinds are real, there's usually a clear answer. If you can't think of one, it's worth sitting with.
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Pitch deck optional — recommended
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Where should we send your readiness read?

Gunika reviews every submission personally. Not a template — a specific note on your Problem & Market positioning, plus an invitation to a 30-minute diagnostic call if there's something worth exploring.

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