How to spot non-obvious verticals for your core tech

Founders can often get tunnel vision with their technology. When an engineering team spends years building a solution for a specific problem in a specific market, it is easy for a startup to focus entirely on that sector. At the start, focusing on one opportunity and maximising it makes sense, so you don’t stretch the business too thin.

Yet, strong growth in the European ecosystem often comes from looking beyond that starting point. Technology built for one specific sector often finds its true growth opportunity by solving problems in multiple different industries with common business problems

Finding these non-obvious verticals requires a mindset shift. It might sound odd, but instead of viewing your product through the lens of your current target customer, evaluate your technology based on what it broadly does. By breaking the solution into its core technical aspects and divorcing it from how it solves the issues of its current target sector, you can identify new growth channels that will help your startup flourish.

Break your product down to its basic capabilities

The first step in finding new business verticals is to look beyond what your product is currently used for and identify what it actually does. Strip away the branding, industry and specific problem it was built to solve. What is the underlying capability?

For example, imagine a software that tracks keyboard and mouse activity to identify signs of workplace fatigue. Its current application is employee wellbeing for people who spend long periods working at a desk. But the underlying technology is broader: it can detect and verify patterns in human behaviour through keyboard and mouse inputs.

That distinction opens up new possibilities. If the technology can identify unusual or suspicious patterns in human input, it could potentially be used in online security to stop malicious actors, in fintech to stop fraud, or even in video games to identify cheating players.

The point is not to force a product into completely unrelated markets. It is to separate what the product does from the specific problem it currently solves. Once you understand that underlying capability, you can look for other industries facing problems the same technology could help solve.

Identify overlapping traits across verticals

Once you understand your product’s core capabilities, the next challenge is mapping them to other sectors confronting similar operational barriers. Unrelated industries often face surprisingly similar challenges. A dashboard designed to solve a logistical bottleneck in a distributor might also solve a workflow problem in healthcare. Similarly, anti-fraud solutions in online gambling could get a second chance helping compliance risks in retail banking.

To spot these overlaps, look for sectors that share three simple traits with your primary market: similar data inputs, comparable risk levels, and a financial incentive to solve the problem your product addresses. The opportunity often lies in recognising that the same technical capability can solve very different problems.

A technology built to solve a certain problem does not necessarily belong to the industry where it first found traction but could be relevant in many other industries. Startups that look beyond their original use case and recognise these commonalities can successfully identify entirely new markets where their existing technology can deliver more value.

To move efficiently into new verticals, startups should avoid rebuilding their core product and changing how it functions. If a vertical is right for your solution, it should adapt with minimal changes, and the best way to prove that is to run small, low-risk pilot schemes to test demand and performance.

A practical approach is building simple, lightweight integrations using existing systems. Find at least one business or team in the target sector and offer a short sandbox trial. You’ll need to conduct research and build a case study, not just to prove that this vertical is a good fit for your product but also to prove to potential investors that this new direction makes sense.

This approach lowers friction, gives you access to real operational data, and shows whether your core technology performs as expected in a new environment.

Evaluate commercial viability before committing

Not every viable technical use makes good business sense. Before shifting resources or building a new product line, startups must thoroughly assess the target market’s commercial realities. A sector might seem large, but if the sales process takes 18 months, requires complex compliance certificates, or is already highly competitive, the opportunity cost may be too high for an early-stage company.

Look closely at contract speeds and sales cycles in the new domain. For example, moving from standard software sales to enterprise healthcare or government contracts might be too large a jump for your startup’s cash reserves to handle, regardless of how good a fit the technology might actually be.

Compare prospective customer value and acquisition costs in the new sector against your current baseline. The ideal new market is one where the problem is urgent, where there is willingness to experiment with new solutions, and where regulatory requirements match your current setup.

Expanding into new verticals can help startups build lasting advantages and scale efficiently. By breaking your technology down to its core capabilities, identifying shared challenges and opportunities, and testing ideas through simple pilots, you can discover new growth channels without starting from scratch.

Before committing, compare each opportunity with your core technology, the problem it solves, the underlying technology/capability it provides, and the commercial reality of the new market.