Where to Fish for a Unicorn: The Workflow Quadrant
Score a B2B SaaS idea on two axes — workflow breadth and frequency — to predict billion-dollar potential.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 92%
A pre-investment filter for B2B SaaS ideas that segments the market on two dimensions: how many departments a workflow touches (Niche vs. Everyone) and how often it is executed (infrequent vs. high-frequency). Plotting an idea on the resulting quadrant gives predictive power about profitability and defensibility before you sink years into building. The quadrant is not static — strategy is the path you take to migrate from a lower square to a higher one.
Origin
Developed by Oji Udezue as both an operator and investor, shared in his writings on Substack and Medium under the framing 'where do you fish to find a unicorn.' He validated it by mapping the biggest public and private companies into each quadrant.
Core principles
- 01The problem space, not just customer science, predicts startup success
- 02Breadth (how many departments) and frequency (how often executed) are the two axes that matter
- 03High-frequency + Everyone workflows are most profitable but dominated by Microsoft/Google
- 04High-frequency + Niche ('Hi-Ni') is where B2B SaaS actually thrives
- 05Companies are not destined to stay in one quadrant — strategy is the migration path upward
How to run it
- 1
Define the workflow you're solving
Pin down the specific workflow your product addresses, not the feature or idea. Udezue treats the workflow as the unit of productivity.
Pro tip Use 'workflow' rather than 'use case' or 'spec' — it forces you to think about the actual sequence of work a person does.
- 2
Rate breadth: Niche or Everyone
Determine whether the workflow applies to a single department (Niche) or to every department from the doorman to the CEO (Everyone). Everyone workflows are things like email, collaboration, writing, calendaring.
- 3
Rate frequency: high or low
Assess how often the workflow runs. Daily or multiple times a week is high frequency; roughly twice a week down to monthly is infrequent. There is a large 'interregnum' in the middle.
- 4
Place the idea on the quadrant and read the odds
High-frequency Everyone (email, Slack, Notion — owned by Microsoft/Google/Atlassian) and high-frequency Niche ('Hi-Ni' — Jira, Salesforce, martech, sales stack) are the strong squares. Low-frequency squares (form tools, expensing, FP&A planning) are harder to build a billion-dollar company in.
Pro tip If you land in Hi-Everyone or Hi-Ni and solve a genuinely important workflow, you can probably build a billion-dollar company.
Watch out The two high-Everyone incumbents are entrenched giants; a startup usually cannot attack that square head-on.
- 5
Plot a migration path upward
If you start in a low quadrant, design a route to a higher one — e.g. add a module the finance department uses daily so a low-frequency-Everyone tool becomes high-frequency for a mission-critical group. Find the part of the org that treats you as Mission critical and solve their problems beyond the generic ones.
Pro tip Typeform is technically low-frequency; Udezue's strategy is to move it into Hi-Ni by making marketers and salespeople think of it first as their way to win new business.
In the wild
Udezue mapped real companies into each square: high-frequency Everyone holds Google, Microsoft, Atlassian (Confluence), Notion, Slack; high-frequency Niche holds Jira, Salesforce, recruiter tools, martech and sales stacks; low-frequency Everyone holds form tools and expensing; low-frequency Niche holds FP&A planning done infrequently.
→ The map showed high-frequency Niche as the most productive place for a startup to win, guiding both founder focus and investor capital deployment.
Typeform sits in low-frequency territory. Udezue's product strategy is to expand its foothold with marketers and salespeople — who are particularly served by customer-facing interactions — so a portion of the audience treats Typeform as their Hi-Ni tool for winning business.
→ A deliberate strategy to climb from a low-frequency square into the productive high-frequency Niche square rather than staying stuck.
Common mistakes
Treating the quadrant as a fixed destiny
Founders assume their idea is permanently stuck in whatever square it starts in. The whole point of strategy is to navigate upward — build a mission-critical module or focus on a core customer to migrate to a higher-frequency or broader square.
Attacking the high-frequency Everyone square head-on
That square is the most profitable but is dominated by Microsoft and Google. A startup with no wedge that tries to compete directly there will be crushed; you must enter via an adjacent square first.
Is it for you?
Best for
B2B SaaS founders and early-stage investors evaluating which problem to spend years on before committing capital.
Not ideal for
Pure consumer products, deep-tech/research bets where the market doesn't yet exist (e.g. an OpenAI-style innovation play), or teams already at scale with a validated workflow.
From the transcript
“how many departments in the company does the workflow you're trying to solve apply to right is it just a few or is it all…”
“the second is how Intense or how frequent is the workflow executed is it daily is it weekly is it three times a week”
“the place where B2B size really thrives as a niche uh workflows that are highly frequent right um High 9 is what I call it”
“the essence of strategies to navigate from you know the the the the curve of travel is essentially go from the lower to the higher”
From the episode
Picking sharp problems, increasing virality, and unique product frameworks
Oji Udezue (Typeform, Twitter, Calendly, Atlassian)