Research a new market before entering it

A new market is only researchable once it's specific. "Healthcare" is too broad to count or test. "Independent dental practices in the US with three to twenty dentists" is a market Kite can find, count, and reach.

Kite turns your idea into that kind of definition. It starts with your current best customers and asks what would carry over: the size of company, the role of the person who buys, the problem they're solving, and the tools they already use. Then it proposes a definition for the new market and the questions the research needs to answer. For example, a scheduling tool considering dental practices might need to know how many practices fit, which booking products they use today, and whether practice owners search for alternatives.

You can accept Kite's definition, narrow it, or give it your own. When you're weighing several options, such as three countries or two industries, Kite can define each one the same way so the results are comparable.

The most reliable way to size a market is from the bottom up: count the real companies or people who fit, then look at how many show signs of needing you now. This gives you a number you can act on, because every company in the count is one you could contact.

Kite searches for companies in the new market by industry, size, and location. It can narrow the search further by headcount growth, funding, hiring, and the technology a company uses. It can also start from a few companies you already know are a good fit and find others that look like them. From the results, Kite reports how many companies match and how they break down, such as by country, size band, or sub-industry.

Next, Kite looks for timing. Recent funding, hiring for a relevant role, a new location, or a leadership change can all mean a company is about to buy. A market with 4,000 matching companies, 300 of which are hiring for the role your product supports, is a different opportunity from one where almost nobody is changing.

Kite can also find the people who would buy at those companies, by title, function, and seniority, so you know whether the decision-maker you'd need to reach actually exists in that market. It scores sample accounts from one to five against your customer profile and explains each score, so you can see what a good customer in the new market looks like.

Related How-to pages

• How to find companies using a specific technology with BuiltWith: Count and list the companies in a new market that run a particular product, such as a competitor's tool or a platform you integrate with.
• How to find recently funded companies with Crunchbase: Find the companies in a market that just raised money and may have new budget to spend.
• How to research target accounts with Exa: Read deeply about the specific companies that make up a market before deciding which ones to approach first.

Every market you might enter already has someone selling to it, even if that someone is a spreadsheet or a local agency. Kite finds out who those competitors are and what a buyer in that market sees when they compare them.

Kite builds the competitor list from several directions. It checks which companies rank for the searches buyers in that market make, which products AI answers recommend when someone asks about the problem, and which tools show up on the websites of the companies it counted. Those lists often differ, and the differences are useful. A competitor that ranks well in search but never appears in AI answers is leaving room you could take.

For each competitor, Kite researches the website, positioning, pricing, and products. It compares their search presence and reviews the ads they're running, including the copy, landing pages, and how long each ad has run. It can also check funding and size. This shows you whether the market is led by one well-funded company, split among many small ones, or served mostly by general tools that weren't built for it.

The point of this step is to find your opening. Kite looks for what the existing options leave out: a buyer size nobody targets, a price point nobody offers, or a question buyers keep asking that no competitor's site answers.

Demand tells you whether buyers in the new market are already looking for a solution or whether you'd have to convince them they have a problem. Kite measures it from three kinds of evidence.

The first is search. Kite researches the keywords buyers in the new market would use, how many searches each one gets, how hard each would be to rank for, and which sites currently win them. For a new country, it checks the searches in that location.

The second is AI answers. Kite runs the questions buyers in that market would ask through ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude and records which companies the answers recommend and which pages they cite. That shows you who buyers are being sent to today, and whether your company shows up at all.

The third is public conversation. Kite reads relevant discussions on X and Hacker News and across the public web to see how buyers describe the problem in their own words. Those words often become the headline of the landing page you test later.

Kite brings the research together into a recommendation you can act on. It says whether the market looks worth entering, which part of it to start with, and what you'd need to offer to win there.

The recommendation is tied to the evidence. Kite might say that the UK looks promising because there are 1,200 companies matching your profile, search demand for your category is strong, and the two leading competitors don't publish pricing. Or it might say a vertical looks crowded, because AI answers recommend the same three specialist tools for every question and all three are well funded. In that case it might suggest a narrower slice the specialists ignore.

Throughout the report, Kite cites its sources, states how confident it is in each finding, and separates what it found from what it inferred. If the report needs more room than a chat message, Kite publishes it as a report with charts and tables that you can share by link. It also saves the findings in your team's knowledge base, so later work on that market starts from the same research.

The fastest way to learn whether a market wants you is a small, real test. Kite turns its recommendation into a proposed initiative with a few first tasks you can approve.

A typical test has two parts. Kite builds a landing page written for the new market, using the problem and language it found in its research, and publishes it once you approve it. Then it builds a list of the best-fit accounts it found, writes outreach that mentions something real about each company, and sends it once you approve the campaign. On a website Kite hosts, it tracks visits, signups, and form submissions on its own. It also reports replies to the outreach.

Kite checks the results on a schedule and tells you what they mean. Replies from one sub-segment but not another might mean the market is real but narrower than you thought. Good traffic but no signups might mean the offer needs work rather than the market. Kite can also set up watches on the competitors in the new market, so you hear when one launches something or changes its pricing while you're deciding.