The best software ideas are hiding inside small businesses.
Product Market Sprint brings business owners and AI-native builders together to uncover valuable problems, build tailored solutions, and find products worth growing.
Why we exist
Building software got easier. Understanding what to build did not.
AI has lowered the cost of creating software. It has not replaced the insight required to build the right product for the right people.
Generic software is built to be acceptable to everyone, which means it rarely fits anyone exactly. Even a need every business claims to share comes apart the moment you step inside the industry. Take the one job they all swear is universal, the timely follow-up:
The same follow-up, four very different jobs
- Allied healtha patient who drifts off halfway through a care plan
- Constructiona quote that goes cold a week before it would have been won
- Wholesalea standing order that quietly shrinks a little every month
- Property managementa lease that lapses with no renewal conversation started
Multiply that across the whole economy of specialised businesses and you get millions of these differences: the customer behaviour, operational constraints, industry language, and flow-on effects an outsider cannot see. They are where the most valuable problems hide.
When a startup launches, there have to be at least some users who really need what they're making, not just people who could see themselves using it one day, but who want it urgently. Usually this initial group of users is small, for the simple reason that if there were something that large numbers of people urgently needed and that could be built with the amount of effort a startup usually puts into a version one, it would probably already exist. Which means you have to compromise on one dimension: you can either build something a large number of people want a small amount, or something a small number of people want a large amount. Choose the latter. Not all ideas of that type are good startup ideas, but nearly all good startup ideas are of that type.Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator
That changes the opportunity for both sides. Builders can create tailored products for markets that were once too narrow to be worth serving. And small businesses get something they could rarely justify before: software shaped around how their industry actually works, a genuine boost on a problem they live with every day, without the cost and risk of a traditional custom build.
Why now
AI changed the economics of software.
A smaller market might only hold a $2M opportunity: not enough for a traditional software company, but exceptional for a small AI-native team. This is AI-native execution: it lowers the headcount, cost, and revenue a product needs to justify itself, so markets across the SMB economy that were once too small to serve become real opportunities for a focused team.
We started in Sydney because the SMB economy is not a niche; it is the economy. Sort every business by headcount and almost all of them are small or medium, fewer than 200 employees each, which is why SMBs make up more than 99% of Australian businesses. Genuinely large enterprises are the rare exception. Inside that scale sit millions of specific, valuable problems still waiting for software that understands them.
Sources: ASBFEO GDP contribution and small business data.
Why the room
The hard part is getting close enough to see it.
So the bottleneck has moved. Now that AI has inverted the equation behind software, the scarce advantage is no longer the ability to build; it is access to the people, problems, and business context that reveal what is actually worth building.
Insight like that does not survive a screen. In person, a business owner can show you the flow-on effects an outsider would never guess: how one change ripples through staffing, unit costs, and customer behaviour. A builder brings patterns from other industries the owner has never seen. Put them in the same room and the product gets better than either could have designed alone.
The same shift lets us flip the format. A hackathon starts with builders and an invented idea, then hunts for a problem to fit it. We start the other way around: a real SMB problem first, then reason from first principles. From the ground up, how would you build a business to solve it with AI at its core? The workflow, the product, and the unit economics, all designed around it.
Product Market Sprint creates that connection. We put capable builders in the room with business owners who understand the problem from the inside. Over one structured day, they uncover what matters, shape a tailored solution, build, gather feedback, and identify what deserves to grow beyond the sprint.
Who runs it
Built by operators who care what happens after demo day.
Jeremy
Co-founder · Programme & partnershipsJeremy is an accomplished software engineer and a Codex ambassador, deeply embedded in the Sydney startup scene. His work reaches across Southeast Asia through Build Club and AI.SEA, building alongside the region's AI community. That blend of engineering depth and ecosystem reach keeps every sprint grounded in what builders can actually ship.
Haichen
Co-founder · Method & strategyHaichen is a multiple-time founder and AI-native builder, currently launching ventures in health tech. He has operated across both startups and corporate, spanning a range of industries, and has led the architecture behind customer-experience functions at scale. He shapes the Sprint Method and the commercial thinking behind it, turning a day of progress into a credible path from problem to product.
Questions
The short answers.
What is Product Market Sprint?
Product Market Sprint is a one-day, community-led product sprint in Sydney. A business owner brings a real opportunity from inside the business, and AI-native builders work alongside the owner to understand it, shape it, and build toward software they demo the same day. It is free to take part in. The day runs on a simple idea: the independent businesses that keep an economy running deserve software built around how they actually work, and the builders who look closely enough to make it deserve the opportunity that comes with it.
How is Product Market Sprint different from a hackathon?
Hackathons made sense when building something in a day was the achievement. AI has taken care of that. Shipping in a day is no longer the hard part, and a demo nobody needed is still a demo nobody needed. The hard part now is knowing what is worth building. So a sprint starts with a real business problem and the person who lives it, and they stay in the room all day while you build.
Who is it for?
Two sides. Business owners who know their business from the inside and want to find where AI could genuinely improve it: faster quoting, better retention, less admin drag, a customer experience they cannot currently offer. And AI-native builders who can already ship with AI tools and want a product opportunity grounded in real demand rather than an invented idea.
What might a business get out of it?
A clearer read on where software could create leverage, and something tangible to react to rather than a proposal to imagine. Not every opportunity needs a new platform. Plenty are solved cleanly by a prompt, a workflow change, or a small automation, and that is a genuinely good outcome. The business gets practical leverage straight away, and builders tend to agree: this is not all about producing startups, and a fix that quietly saves hours every week is worth building.
Got another question? Contact us at team@productmarketsprint.ai.
Bring us an opportunity worth building around.
Want to join as a builder, bring a business opportunity, support a sprint, or offer a venue? Send it through. One of us reads every message. And if you would like to see a Product Market Sprint in a city near you, tell us; we are keen to bring the format to more places.