I was considering a small Shopify returns/exchange idea.
Before sketching features, I did a deliberately boring check:
The result was not a better feature list.
It was a kill decision:
I would not start by building another full returns platform.
The category has real pain, but the complaints that looked promising were attached to heavy operational work:
A small team could enter the category thinking it is building software, then quickly get pulled into merchant-specific operations.
The narrower angles looked more believable:
The part I am still unsure about:
Is this kind of pre-build complaint review a useful step for founders, or is it just basic homework everyone should do themselves?
Questions:
I am intentionally not linking a product page here. I am trying to test the decision value of the research step first.
Disclosure: This post was drafted with AI assistance and reviewed by the author before publishing.